PESHAWAR: A Peshawar High Court bench has directed the provincial government to pay the outstanding salaries of around 212 employees of the People’s Primary Healthcare Initiative.

Justice Waqar Ahmad Seth and Justice Syed Arshad Ali also asked the government and Sarhad Rural Support Programme to respond to a contempt of court petition filed by the said employees, including Shakeel Khan and others, insisting the respondents, including the government, had not been complying with the earlier order of the high court.

On Mar 16, 2017, the high court had accepted a petition of the petitioners, who had sought multiple reliefs from the court.

The court had directed the government to regularise services of the petitioners.

The petitioners had challenged a notification issued by the provincial government on May 11, 2016, through which their services were terminated.

They had prayed the court to declare the said notification illegal and order their absorption or regularisation under the Regularisation Act, 2009.

Sahibzada Asadullah, lawyer for the petitioners, said the provincial government and SRSP had entered into an agreement or MoU initially in 2006 and subsequently in 2013 for provision of Primary Health Care Service in consequence thereof, initially the programme was started in certain districts, which on performance was extended to other districts.

He said after appointment the petitioners were posted against the respective posts and districts and they ran the task to the best of their ability but on May 11, 2016, the provincial government asked the respective district health officers to take over the PPHI management from the SRSP promoting the petitioners to move court.

The lawyer said the petition was accepted by the high court but neither did the petitioners pay their outstanding salaries nor the provincial government regularised their services.

Zartaj Anwar, lawyer for the SRSP, said his client had asked the PPHI administration to provide data about the employees for payment of salaries.

He assured that after receiving the said data the salaries would be given to the employees.

In the main petition, the provincial government had stated that it had no concern with the matters, terms and condition of service of the petitioners as they had been appointed by a company (SRSP) and were serving with it under the ‘principal of master and servant’.

It added that if the petitioners had any lawful claim, they could sue the company for relief.

REPLY SOUGHT: A bench consisting of Justice Qaiser Rasheed and Justice Nasir Mehfooz has sought reply from the Charsadda district police officer on a petition filed by the brother of a policeman, who was killed in the firing by security forces in 2008.

The petitioner, Samander Khan, claimed that a police party, including his brother Saeed Rehman, was on routine patrol in Subhan Khwar area of Charsadda when security forces had erroneously fired at them killing his brother.

He said though compensation had been paid to the family of the deceased in accordance with the ‘Shuhada Package’, the government hadn’t been providing employment to his client in the police department.

The petitioner said the reason given by the police department for non-provision of employment was the non-registration of FIR of that incident.

The bench wondered how compensation was paid in the absence of an FIR.

The petitioner said the police were reluctant to register the case due to the involvement of security forces in the occurrence.

Published in Dawn, June 25th, 2017