KARACHI, Jan 1: The Sindh High Court on Tuesday restrained the provincial government from issuing final appointment letters to the newly-recruited policemen without the court’s consent.

A division bench of the SHC comprising Justices Muneeb Akhtar and Mohammad Shafi Siddiqui also issued notices for Jan 18 to the chief secretary, home secretary and some senior police officials over alleged irregularities in the recruitment of police constables.

In their petition, Waseem Khan and around two dozen other petitioners submitted that they had applied for the posts of policemen (BPS-5) in February after an advertisement appeared in the media about the recruitment in the police department.

The petitioners contended that they furnished mandatory documents, which were thoroughly scrutinised, and remained successful in all the tests and considered themselves to have qualified for the posts.

However, they maintained that the results had not been announced publicly so far while appointment orders were issued to the candidates who had either remained unsuccessful or had never been a part of the recruitment process.

The petitioners further submitted that the police department had again announced recruitment of police constables through the Dec 9 advertisements. They said the process would be illegal because they claimed they had already qualified for theses posts, but were deprived of appointment.

The petitioners cited the chief secretary, home secretary, deputy inspector general of police (administration) and superintendent of police (west) as respondents in the petition.

They requested the court to suspend the recruitment process based on the recently published advertisements and direct the respondents to recruit the petitioners if they were eligible for the posts.

They also prayed to the court to call previous record of the recruitment made last year.

The division bench ruled that the recruitment process as per Dec 9 advertisement could be continued, but such process shall remain subject to such orders as may be issued by this court in this petition and no final appointments orders shall be issued without the permission of the court.

Meanwhile, the same bench issued on Tuesday notices to the Sindh government through the chief secretary and secretary women welfare department over non-payment of salaries and non-confirmation of five female employees.

The petitioners contended that they have been deprived of their salaries for around a year since they raised the issue of their confirmation and prayed the court for release of their salaries and confirmation.

KMC salaries Chief Justice of the Sindh High Court Mushir Alam on Tuesday took suo motu notice of non-payment of salaries to Karachi Metropolitan Corporation employees.

The court put the chief secretary and the secretary of the local bodies department on notice for a date to be fixed later by the court office.

A representative of a non-governmental organisation and the collective bargaining agent of the KMC had earlier filed applications in the court, submitting that most KMC employees, including fire brigade and sanitary workers, had been without salaries for the past couple of months.

The applicants claimed that the chief minister had announced that the finance department would release over Rs850 million on a monthly basis to ensure payment of salaries to the employees of KMC on time, but it did not yield result. They added that instead of celebrating Christmas, the employees belonging to the Christian community staged protest demonstrations on roads for their salaries.

They claimed that it was the violation of human rights and prayed to the chief justice to take suo motu notice.