01 June 2004	Tuesday	12 Rabi-us-Saani 1425

KARACHI, May 31: A senior civil judge stayed on Monday a cut in the salaries of the Civil Aviation Authority and directed the ministry of defence and the (CAA) to maintain status quo.

Judge Ms Rana Shamsi of district Malir issued the directives while hearing a suit (144/2004) filed by over 100 CAA officials challenging the recent cut in their salaries. The plaintiffs also included several senior air traffic controllers, general managers and corporate managers.

According to the plaintiffs, the federal finance secretary, through a letter on April 18, asked the defence secretary to recover the increased amount from the CAA officers, who were given a 30 per cent raise in their salaries.

The plaintiff maintained that the CAA was a commercial and self-financing organisation and salary structure of its employees was decided by the CAA Board under the CAA Ordinance, 1982.

They submitted that the CAA Board had approved 30 per cent raise in their salaries in 2002. The raise was with retrospective effect and payable from year 2001. The difference was paid to the employees besides payment of salary according to new revised scale.

The plaintiffs maintained that on April 18, a letter was written by Federal Finance Secretary asking the CAA to stop payment of revised salaries to the employees in grade 7 to 11 forthwith, recovery of excess amount paid and also to take action against the officials responsible for allowing/approving the new salary structure.

Farooq Rasheed advocate represented the plaintiffs and Syed Touqeer Hussain appeared for the defendants. The judge ordered the defence secretary and DG CAA to maintain status quo in the payment of salaries to the plaintiffs till the disposal of the suit. She adjourned the matter till July 7.

The government had withdrawn a salary raise given to the officers of the Civil Aviation Authority two years ago and ordered the recovery of the disbursed amount from their salaries on monthly basis.

The decision sent a wave of concern and resentment among over 1,000 regular officers of the CAA. Over 90 affected officers of different cadre attended an emergent meeting held at the Airport Community Centre last week and condemned the decision.

A fund was also established in the meeting for taking up the matter to the court. While talking to Dawn, a group of affected officials said the salary raised had been duly approved by the executive committee and board of directors of the CAA, which was an autonomous functionary under the administrative control of the defence ministry.

The CAA officers said the salaries of the CAA employees were normally revised after every three years. The government decision came at a time when their salaries were already due to be enhanced, they deplored.

The officers said they had been drawing the raised salaries for the past over two years and each of them has so far got over Rs300,000 in the head of enhancement alone.

"Many of us have purchased cars from leasing companies, others have got houses booked. It would be impossible for us to pay off the liabilities we have taken as a result of salary raise", they said.

They said the regular officers of the CAA were already outnumbered by a very large number of deputationists. "We are were feeling betrayed by the policies of the executive committee, which comprised all deputationists or contractual officials", the officials said.

The executive committee is headed by the CAA DG, who is a retired air marshall. The four committee members are CAA deputy DG, who is a serving air vice marshall, a retired brigadier working as director administration, a serving air commodore working as director technical, and director finance Bashir Ahmed Abbasi, a senior serving bureaucrat.