LAHORE, Aug 20: A division bench of the Supreme Court has accepted the plea of 29 calligraphers of the defunct daily Imroze regarding pensionary benefits to them.

The bench dismissed the appeals of the Progressive Papers Limited (PPL) and the National Press Trust (NPT) and upheld the decision of the Federal Service Tribunal under which the PPL was directed on Oct 14 last to pay full pensionary benefits to the newspaper employees.

Shaikh Abdul Majeed, Siraj Din, Yousuf Javed, Khurshid Alam and 25 others moved the Punjab Labour Court in 1997 with the grievance that they had not been paid pension, fixed at 40 per cent of their basic salary, since December 1996.

The labour court accepted the petitions and the PPL and the NPT management filed appeals with the service tribunal on the ground that the employees had received all dues at the time of retirement.

The tribunal also dismissed the appeals on the ground that the appellants had not been able to establish if the employees had forfeited their pensionary right at the time of settlement of dues.

The tribunal held that the employees were entitled to full pensionary benefits as their acceptance of commutation did not debar them from this benefit.

The PPL and the NPT challenged the decision in the Supreme Court which, on July 7 this year, upheld the tribunal's decision and declined to grant leave to appeal to the appellants.