KARACHI, Aug 26: The Federal Service Tribunal has reinstated 39 employees of the United Bank Limited, Karachi zone. The appellants submitted that they were employed against permanent vacancies of assistants, messengers and watchmen in the early 1990s but were dismissed by verbal orders in 1996. Their appeals were dismissed in 1997 as the tribunal held that insertion of Section 2A of the Service Tribunal Act, 1973, which declared bank employees ‘civil servants’ in 1996, could not be given retrospective effect. The Supreme Court reversed the order and ruled that the provision was retrospective. The appellants approached the FST under the SC decision.

The appellants alleged that they were sacked on their joining the UBL Labour Union, the bank’s collective bargaining agent. No showcause notice was issued. In fact, there was no termination order in writing. Each one of them served a grievance notice, but there was no response from the bank management. They said their dismissal from service was in clear violation of standing order 12(3) of the West Pakistan Industrial and Commercial Employment (Standing Orders) Ordinance, 1968.

The bank management replied that the appellants were “temporary, casual workers”, who were not issued appointment letters. There was no employer-employee or master-servant relationship between them and the bank. They were ‘thrust’ on the bank by the union chief, Abdul Aziz Memon. Finally, the bank had since been privatized and tribunal had no jurisdiction to hear the appeals.

The FST bench, comprising Qazi Muhammad Hussain Siddiqui and Rashid Ali Mirza, held on Thursday that the appeals were competent and that the tribunal had jurisdiction to hear them. The respondent bank, a commercial establishment, was obliged to act in accordance with standing orders of 1968. By simply sacking the employees as ‘casual labourers’, the appellants could not be deprived of the protection afforded by the standing orders.

Setting aside the oral termination orders, the bench directed the respondent bank to regularize, within a month, the appellants’ services from the date of their joining. No back benefits were allowed as the appellants were partly responsible for their plight inasmuch as they made no effort to secure their appointment letters. There was no order as to costs. Advocate Mushtaq Ahmed Shaikh represented the appellants and Chaudhry Mohammad Jamil the UBL.