KARACHI, Aug 23: The Sindh High Court on Tuesday ordered promotion of two grade 18 federal government doctors to grade 19 with effect from March 1989. The petitioners should be given all consequential benefits arising from their promotion to grade 19 with effect from March 12, 1989, in pursuance of a directive issued by the then prime minister, a division bench, comprising Justices M. Mujibullah Siddiqui and Khilji Arif Hussain, asked the federal health ministry. In case the petitioners have retired, the benefits would be allowed to them for the duration of their service and their pensionary benefits would be calculated accordingly, it ordered.

The directive was issued by the PM’s secretariat to give effect to prime minister Benazir Bhutto’s announcement at the Liaquat Medical College (Jamshoro) convocation that all doctors working in grade 18 should be promoted to grade 19. The decision was implemented by the provincial governments but the federal finance division had certain reservations in respect of its applicability to the medical officers serving under the federal government.

The federal health ministry advised the finance division, in a summary addressed to the finance secretary in April 1994, to give effect to the PM’s decision as the directive was not confined to the Liaquat Medical College staff and the NWFP government and other provincial government had implemented it. The Peshawar High Court repelled the contention that the directive was not applicable to doctors employed by the federal government in a judgment delivered by it in September 1994.

Aggrieved by the government’s dilly-dallying, Dr Nisar Ahmed Ansari, director, central health establishment, Karachi, and Dr Aba Ahmed, civil surgeon, ministry of health, Karachi, who were working in grade 18 in March 1989 but were not promoted to grade 19, approached the Sindh High Court with a writ petition in 1996.

The petition came up for final hearing before a division bench on Tuesday and the bench, agreeing with the view taken by the Peshawar High Court, asked the federal government to promote the petitioners with retrospective effect. Advocate Ziaul Haq Makhdoom appeared for the petitioners.