SC decree: PTCL employees entitled to receive pension, benefits

Legal Protection under the T&T service rules

ISLAMABAD:

Retired departmental employees of Pakistan Telecommunication Company Limited (PTCL) are entitled to pensions and other benefits, the Supreme Court (SC) declared on Friday.

The five member larger bench headed by Chief Justice Anwar Zaheer Jamali heard the review petitions of the PTCL management and upheld its earlier judgement to grant pension and other benefits to PTCL employees. Former Chief Justice Jawwad S Khawaja had given judgement in favour of former PTCL employees in October 2011.

In light of this judgement thousands of retired employees are now entitled to pension and other retirement benefits. In its short order, the bench ruled that the Telephone and Telegraph (T&T) employees’ service rules had legal protection and this right was available to the employees at the time of privatization. The detailed judgement will be announced later.

PTCL counsel Khalid Anwar contended that the employees of PTCL were not governed by the statutory rules of service arguing that PTCL was at liberty to deal with its employees regardless of any constraints specified in sections 35 and 36 of the Pakistan Telecommunication (PTC) Reorganization Act 1996.

Amicus Curiae for the case, Salman Akram Raja, argued that PTCL employees were no longer civil servants though they were still government servants.

Additional Attorney General Waqar Rana said that in 1991 when T&T was abolished, its employees were transferred to PTCL and their rights were protected under the PTC Act 1996. He said such employees are entitled to pensions, but those PTCL employees hired after the PTC Act have no rights on pension as these regulations do not apply to them.

Justice Amir Hani Muslim said that rulers should not sell national assets in the way they had been sold in the past.


Published in The Express Tribune, February 20^th, 2016.