LAHORE: The forced retirement of 85 regular officials of the Punjab Emergency Service (Rescue 1122) on the recommendations of a medical board has been challenged before the Lahore High Court for being an unlawful act.

Imran Yousaf, a gazetted officer of the department, filed a petition through his counsel Chaudhry Shoaib Saleem, pleading that the director general of the Rescue 1122 illegally constituted a medical board consisting of its own employees as none of them was a medical practitioner.

He states that the board summoned the petitioner and other employees to present themselves for medical examination. The petitioner, during his medical examination, clearly told the board that he neither had any disease nor did he undergo any medical treatment and also did not allow them to medically examine him. But, the counsel says, the board declared the petitioner and 84 other employees of the rescue department physically and mentally incapacitated.

The counsel contends that under the Punjab Civil Service Rules, a government servant who wishes to retire on invalid pension, is supposed to apply to his head of office or department who directs him to present himself before a medical board for obtaining a medical certificate of incapacity for further service. However, he argues, the petitioner never filed any such application with the medical board nor did he request his head of the office to retire on invalid pension.

The counsel alleges that this is happening on the whims of the Rescue 1122 DG who wants to create space for more employment on the request of his political masters by forcefully retiring the petitioner and 84 other employees. He says the petitioner is being declared permanently incapacitated due to bodily and mental infirmity but at the same time, a member of the medical board himself constituted a team under the supervision of the petitioner to manage relief work in Muzaffargarh.

The counsel submits that the future of the petitioner will be destroyed if he is declared mentally and physically incapacitated for any further job. He asks the court to declare the recommendations of the medical board illegal and set aside its operation.

Published in Dawn, September 29th, 2022