July 23, 2007	Monday	Rajab 07, 1428

ISLAMABAD, July 22: More than 13,000 cases have piled up with the Federal Service Tribunal (FST) due to delay in the appointment of its new chairman.

The FST has remained non-functional since April 13, when the tenure of its then chairman Justice (retired) Chaudhary Mohammad Arif ended. While talking to Dawn, lawyers seemed pessimistic about the revival of the FST anytime soon.

“This is not the first time that the appointment of the new chairman is taking so long. At times it has taken from two months to as long as eight months. And this is denial of justice and the worst example of good governance,” said Pakistan Services Bar Association president Shoaib Shaheen, when approached on Sunday.

The FST chairman and its members are the two most important ingredients, he said, adding, “The court can function without a member but not in the absence of its head.”

Mr Shaheen also criticised the appointment of the chairmen on contract basis. “It is against independence of judiciary because there is no security of tenure. A chairman can be sacked anytime. Secondly, there is the element of inducement as extensions in tenure are only given when the government is happy with the chairman,” he said.

Some of the lawyers alleged that since the FST dealt mostly with cases against the state, it deliberately did not want the body to be independent.

“That’s why the chairman has very little powers. He even cannot issue a contempt notice to those who fail to execute his orders. For implementation the matter has to be taken to the Supreme Court,” a lawyer said.

The lawyers also criticised the improper criteria for appointing members of the FST.

The president of the Services Bar Association said out of the six members sitting on the three benches in Islamabad, two each in Lahore and Karachi, only one was qualified with a LLB degree.

“The rest are all retired bureaucrats with absolutely no knowledge of law and no judicial experiences. And there are ten times more cases pending with the FST than with the Federal Shariat Court. The government is deliberately trying to cripple the FST,” Mr Shaheen alleged.

The lawyers appealed to the chief justice of Pakistan to intervene, adding a chairman should not be appointed without his consultation because the FST was a judicial forum.