PESHAWAR: A Peshawar High Court bench on Tuesday upheld the dismissal of around 700 employees by the Workers Welfare Board, observing petitions against the sackings were not maintainable.

However, Chief Justice Mazhar Alam Miankhel and Justice Malik Manzoor Hussain directed the WWB to pay outstanding salaries to the petitioners sacked during the last one year.

The bench conducted detailed hearing into around 26 petitions on the matter.

The sacked employees were mostly appointed on contractual basis to different posts, especially those of teachers in different schools run by the board.

Their lawyers insisted the Khyber Pakhtunkhwa Worker Welfare Board, a statutory body established under Section 11-A of the Worker Welfare Fund Ordinance 1971, had removed their clients for different pretexts without providing them with an opportunity to defend their positions.

They said petitioners were condemned unheard and hadn’t been given even the right of appeal against termination of their services.

The lawyers said sacking of their clients could be challenged before the high court as their organisation was a statutory body functioning under the federal and provincial governments and that its chairman had been appointed on the recommendation of the provincial government. They said the superior courts had given several verdicts suggesting even contractual employees couldn’t be removed from service with a single stroke of pen.

Lawyers Arshad Ali and Syed Hazik Ali Shah along with WWB legal assistant Umar Khan insisted the petitions were not maintainable in light of different Peshawar High Court judgments.

They said the petitioners were appointed under the rules, which were not statutory, and therefore, they couldn’t move the high court against their sackings.

Arshad Ali said the Workers Welfare Fund (Employees’ Services) Rules were framed in 1997 and were adopted by the WWB showing the board had no statutory rules.

He said only the employees appointed under statutory rules could challenge their terminations under Article 199 of the Constitution.

The lawyer said in different judgments, the PHC had ruled that the WWB employees were not entitled to move the high court under Article 199 of the Constitution.

Published in Dawn, June 18th, 2014