LAHORE: Known orthopaedic surgeon Prof Dr Amir Aziz has approached the Lahore High Court against the appointment of Prof Dr Faisal Masood as director general of the Punjab Human Organ Transplant Authority (PHOTA) for being made in a non-transparent manner.

“The post of director general/administrator of PHOTA has never been advertised by the government as per rules,” Dr Aziz states in his public interest petition filed through Advocate Nasir Qureshi.

However, the petitioner states that the respondent himself advertised the post when he had additional charge of PHOTA DG being vice chancellor of King Edward Medical University.

He says the terms and conditions including eligibility criteria was finalised and advertised by Dr Masood himself, which in fact was required to be done by the government.

The petitioner pleads that even as per advertised terms and conditions, the respondent was ineligible to apply for the post. It is a settled law that no one can be a judge in his own cause and the respondent by advertising the eligibility criteria for the post himself, for having conflict of interests, was not eligible to apply for the post, he explains.

The petitioner states that services of the respondent, a retired government servant, are not indispensable, and if the post was advertised by the competent authority there would have been numerous eligible candidates for the post.

He says allowing Dr Masood to continue to hold the office shall cause discrimination towards all such eligible candidates, which is not warranted by law. He submits that services of retired government employees are being made/retained on contract and at highly exorbitant packages in violation of rules and are subject to judicial review.

The petitioner asks the court to set aside the appointment of Dr Masood as director general of PHOTA for being illegal and order the government to appoint a qualified person against the post in a transparent manner.

Justice Chaudhry Iqbal would take up the petition on Monday (tomorrow).

Published in Dawn, August 12th, 2018