ISLAMABAD, Feb 26: The Supreme Court has directed the federal government to establish forest training institutions, on the pattern of Peshawar , in all other provinces, and asked the forest department to take necessary precautions always before sending trainees to risky hilly places.

A division bench, comprising Justice Hamid Ali Mirza and Justice Muhammad Nawaz Abbasi, also directed the Sindh government to match the compensation by Rs500,000 each to equal to that of the federal government within a month. The compensation is to be given to the families of two deceased training officers of the forest department from Sindh, who lost their lives.

The directions came in pursuant of a suo moto notice taken by the Supreme Court on the complaint of Syed Imtiaz Ali Shah regarding unnatural death of the training officers.

Senior advocate Tasleem Hussain, who represented the NWFP, told Dawn that two officers Mujtaba Shah and Abdul Qadeer Kandhir fell from a cliff on April 12, 2004, and died. They had lost in the dense hilly forest in the NWFP.

They were part of a 28-member study team, comprising officers from different provinces, visiting "Makra" forest (NWFP) where they were required to scale "Sri-Heights". During climbing, six officers broke away and two of them fell from the cliff. The bodies were found after a two-day search.

Imtiaz Ali Shah, the brother of Mujtaba, and Abdul Hafeez Kundhir, the brother of Qadeer, approached the Supreme Court, which took suo moto notice and summoned the federal government as well as the forest department.

While disposing of the suo moto notice, the bench directed the Sindh government to provide suitable jobs to one of the near relatives of each family of the dead and within four months compensate irreparable loss.

Referring to the announcement of Rs100,000 compensation for each family, the Supreme Court held that the amount was too inadequate for the life of a young person.