KARACHI, June 8: The Sindh High Court asked the Karachi Building Control Authority to pay enhanced salaries in grade 18 to its legal advisers or law officers within two weeks.

Three lawyers, Mansoor Ahmad Khan, Rao Sarfraz Khan and Syed Nusrat Ali, submitted that they joined the KBCA as assistant legal advisers in mid-1980s. Though they were hired for office work, they also represented the authority in court proceedings at various levels. Assistant building controllers of comparable seniority have since rose to become controllers or even chief controllers.

Sympathetically considering their plight, former KBCA chief executive Mumtazur Rehman Khan promoted them and their colleague, Farooq Shaikh, as deputy legal advisers in grade 18 with effect from April 1, 2007. The decision was approved by the city nazim under the Sindh Building Control Ordinance.

The new chief executive of the authority was not, however, prepared to implement the decision. He regarded the decision as unlawful, though their salaries were recalculated and refixed in May in pursuance of it. Contesting the petition, a KBCA counsel argued that the KBCA had no post of ‘deputy legal adviser’ under the rules and the new chief executive has rightly withheld the revised salaries. The petitioners were free to draw their remunerations under grade 17 as ‘assistant legal advisers’.

The bench observed that an administrative decision taken by the chief executive and approved by the city nazim could not be revoked by the new chief executive. It gave the KBCA two weeks to implement the decision.

GIRL’S RECOVERY: The bench directed the deputy inspector-general of Hyderabad police to recover and produce a girl alleged by her mother to have been kidnapped by a fellow domestic servant.