Port Qasim Authority: Court rules PQA hiring practices illegal

SC will decide the fate of employees hired recently, once attorney general submits report detailing the appointments.

ISLAMABAD: The Supreme Court has ruled that the hiring practices of the Port Qasim Authority are illegal and will decide the fate of employees hired in recent years once the attorney general submits a report detailing the appointments.

The ruling was handed down Saturday during the hearing of a petition of Abdul Jabbar Memon, a suspended official of the Port Qasim Authority, who challenged his suspension and the employment practices of the PQA. According to sources, the prime minister has already ordered Memon restored to his former position.

The court agreed with Memon’s allegation that the PQA was negligent in not framing its own hiring rules and that it violated existing federal employment regulations in its hiring practices over the last three years. Specifically, all of the senior officials hired were from Karachi, which violates federal government quotas for candidates from other parts of the country.

At least 45 senior officers hired over the past three years got their jobs through the recommendations of Babar Khan Ghauri, the former federal minister for ports and shipping, who belongs to the MQM.

The PQA was set up in 1973 but the committee to draft employment rules was established in 2003 and did not meet until 2010. The SC ordered the PQA to formally frame its hiring rules within four weeks.

Published in The Express Tribune, February 20^th, 2011.