LAHORE, Nov 28: The Lahore High Court on Tuesday allowed special allowance to the senior teachers serving in the Punjab government-run colleges after securing doctorate degrees from March last year.

The court accepted the writ petition of 48 senior teachers and set aside the notification of the Punjab accountant-general under which the special allowance was withdrawn. The judge observed that when PhD teachers in the Punjab University were getting the allowance, depriving the college teachers of the same benefit would amount to discrimination which was in conflict with the Article 25 of the Constitution.

The court directed the Punjab government to restore the allowance with retrospective effect and pay them arrears from the month its payment was cut off.

Prof Dr Munir Ahmad and 47 other senior teachers who are either deans and head of departments in government colleges across the province, submitted in their writ petition that the Punjab government had allowed in 1988 special allowance and Science and Technology Allowance of Rs1,500 a month. The allowance was raised to Rs5,000 in 2001. But now the Punjab accountant-general, through a notification issued in March 2005, withdrew the allowance and later started deducting from their salary the amount already paid in allowances.

The teachers’ counsel, including Malik Saeed Hassan and Malik Munsif Awan, submitted that the decision of withdrawing the allowance was discriminatory because it was admissible to the Punjab University teachers possessing PhD degrees. They submitted that all teachers in the same category were entitled to the allowance whether they were teaching at colleges or the Punjab University.

The writ petition had been heard on a daily basis for the last three days and the court announced its decision on Tuesday. The counsel submitted that the withdrawal of the allowance was also insulting for senior academicians who did not happen to be members of affluent class.

They stated that the notification for withdrawal of the allowance was illegal because the financial benefit once given could not be withdrawn.

DISABLED PERSONS: Justice Sheikh Azmat Saeed of the Lahore High Court on Tuesday directed a deputy attorney-general to make a submission on Nov 30 (Thursday) about the government policy on the recruitment of the disabled in government departments.

The court issued the notice in the hearing of a writ petition through which Muhammad Afzal Goraya, a blind who is the resident of Hafizabad, submitted that he had been applying to a number of federal government departments, including the SNGPL, the PIA and the Pakistan Railways, for a job against the special quota since 1990 but had not once received a positive response from any of the departments.

He stated that he passed the secondary school examination in 1986 and then obtained a few diplomas for the job.

His counsel, advocate M D Tahir, submitted that the government departments were under a legal obligation to offer two per cent employment to the disabled. But, he submitted, that the federal and provincial governments were ignoring their legal duty.