HYDERABAD, March 11: The Sindh High Court, Hyderabad bench, was told on Friday by education and finance secretaries that a summary was pending with the chief minister since December 2004 to sanction payment of Rs306 million to teachers.

Education and literacy secretary Hashim Leghari and finance secretary Malik Israr Hussain said efforts were being made to resolve the matter in the light of a court order. They added that the finance secretary had also put a note on the summary before forwarding it to the chief minister.

The secretaries said non-compliance of the court order was not intentional but for the aforementioned reason.

They said after approval of the competent authority, a notification in terms of direction of the court would be issued.

The court gave 60 days to the secretaries to resolve the matter. In case the notification is issued as undertaken by the secretaries, they need to attend the court on the next date of hearing, May 12.

According to the summary, moved by the education secretary and produced before the court, the issue of teachers of nationalized cadre had been pending for years.

The teachers had approached the ombudsman, Sindh High Court and the Supreme Court which had passed the order to count service rendered by the teachers before their nationalization for the purpose of pension.

The finance secretary in his note recommended that ?teachers of nationalized cadre may be allowed pension benefits of pre-nationalized period provided they first deposit pension contribution with the Sindh government for the period they served with the private management and then cases be decided by the finance department on case to case basis?.