ISLAMABAD: A senior engineer of Islamabad Electric Supply Company (Iesco) challenged the appointment of the board of directors (BoD) of the company in the Islamabad High Court (IHC) on Monday.
IHC Justice Aamer Farooq after preliminary hearing issued notices to the chief executive officer Iesco and the board members - Engineer Salahuddin Rifai, Sadia Khurram, Ameena Sohail, Ahsan Ali Chughtai, Amir Zafar and Hasnain Haider - and sought their reply in a fortnight.
Engineer Amir Zamir Ahmed through his counsel Barrister Umar Ijaz Gillani contended before the court that the federal government on Dec 28, 2000, appointed the board members “in a patently illegal manner”.
The counsel claimed that the BoD chairman, a 72-year-old person, was not elected by the directors as required by Article 51 of the company’s own Articles of Association. The eligibility criteria provided in the advertisement had no nexus with the core business of Iesco and those selected lack “similar or better” credentials compared to the CEO of the company, thus violating the guidelines as laid down by superior courts.
Petition says federal govt hired six members in ‘patently illegal manner’
According to the counsel, the petitioner is an electrical engineer enrolled with the Pakistan Engineering Council.
A graduate of University of Engineering and Technology, Lahore, he served in power sector companies from 1984 to 2014 when he was director of National Transmission and Dispatch Company. From 2014 to 2018, he remained the director general monitoring and evaluation at the Planning Commission of Pakistan. Since 2015, he has also remained the convener of Pakistan Engineering Council chairman’s taskforce on power sector.
Having spent a life-time serving the power sector, the petitioner considers it his duty to confront the rampant mismanagement of power sector companies by the federal government.
As a professional power sector engineer, he is aggrieved by the complete sidelining of power-sector engineers on account of nepotism, the counsel said.
The petition said the appointment of Engineer Rifai as the director and chairman of the BoD Iesco was made without the mandatory approval of the board.
Likewise, the petition the other directors were appointed without proper process envisaged in public-sector companies (Corporate Governance Rules 2013) and related laws – formation of a competent selection committee, shortlisting, interviews etc. Also, being non-engineers, they do not have any competence in the core business of Iesco - power distribution. Therefore, they and their appointments are liable to be set aside, the petition maintained.
Even the advertisement was worded in such a way that the appointing authority could hire a person of any age and from any walk of life, the petition said, adding the appointing authority thereby retained with itself almost limitless discretion about who to appoint and who to reject which reflected mala fides.
The petition requested the court to scrap the notifications issued for the appointment of the five directors, including the chairman BoD. The petition also requested the court to suspend the notifications till adjudication of the case.
Published in Dawn, March 16th, 2021
