LAHORE: The provincial government has denied regularisation to five contract-based employees in the Punjab Council of the Arts (PUCAR) from their date of appointment, terming it against the provisions of the Punjab Regularisation of Service Act 2018, but allowed regularisation “with immediate effect”.

Five PUCAR employees -- a deputy director and four assistant directors -- had filed a joint representation against the order of the Punjab information secretary, wherein he had cancelled the Jan 12, 2023 order that allowed regularisation of their services from the date of their initial appointments.

During a probe into the representation by the inquiry officer, Member-II (Inquiries) S&GAD Kamran Abdullah Siddiqui, the appellants – PUCAR deputy director (BS-18) Zahid Iqbal and assistant directors (BS-17) Muhammad Luqman, Muhammad Salman, Sher Baz and Zahid Aqil maintained that contrary to the precedents in PUCAR, Director General Public Relations (DGPR) and S&GAD, their regularisation orders were withdrawn and subsequently their regularisation was re-notified “with immediate effect”, which they believed to be discriminatory and against the essence of law.

They referred the PUCAR had already regularised 33 employees from their date of initial appointment and demanded that either they should also be given the benefit as per precedent or regularisation of others from the date of initial appointment be cancelled too.

Of the 33 officials/officers, 26 employees are in BS 1-16; six in BS-17 and another, Masuood Tanvir Arshad, was regularised through an order issued on March 13, 2020.

With respect to the appellants, the information department representative said the information secretary had accorded approval for the regularisation of employees upon completion of three years’ service. However, the then PUCAR executive director issued orders on Jan 12, 2023, allowing regularisation of contractual service from the date of their initial appointment. Since these orders were contrary to the approval of the information and culture secretary, the department took notice of the irregularity and cancelled the orders.

The departmental representative agreed that the regularisation orders issued on Nov 16, 2017 and March 13, 2020 were issued in disregard to the provisions of the substantive law, rules and policy.

Since there is no provision for retrospective regularisation in any law/ policy/rules, Chief Secretary Zahid Akhtar Zaman has directed the information and culture secretary, who is also the PUCAR executive committee chairman, to put up the case to the competent forum for scrutinising the record and revisit the orders dated Nov 16, 2017 and March 13, 2020.

Published in Dawn, September 25th, 2023