A consumer court on Monday issued notice to Daewoo’s station manager for operations for May 11 in a suit seeking payment of Rs 1,057,500 for misplacing the laptop of a government official.
Dawood Muhammad Bareach, additional secretary (Establishment) of the Health Department, filed a petition in a consumer court stating that on February 28, he made a booking at the Daewoo office near Kalma Chowk to send his laptop to Karachi, but it was misplaced on the way.
He said the laptop was full of important data, including various schemes he had worked on under the United Nations Development Programme. It contained some 2,000 research papers purchased from various websites at $20-50 each (Rs1,687-4,217). It also contained magazines and journals that he subscribed to, he said.
Bareach said Daewoo had told him it would hold an inquiry, but nothing had happened. He then served a legal notice to the respondent but the respondent did not reply, he said. He contended that the laptop was lost due to the negligence of Daewoo staffers and sought over a million rupees in damages: Rs50,000 as counsel’s fee, Rs57,500 as the price of the laptop, Rs700,000 for financial losses, Rs135,000 for mental distress, Rs100,000 for physical discomfort and Rs15,000 for miscellaneous expenditure.
The court issued notice to the respondent for May 11.
Yasir Mustafa, the official in charge of cargo at the Daewoo office, told The Express Tribune that he was shocked at the amount the complainant was seeking. He said that a week ago, he had called the petitioner and offered him Rs50,000 for the laptop, but the petitioner had sought Rs58,000.
Asked if the laptop was lost due negligence on Daewoo’s part, he said it was human error and luggage goes missing from aeroplanes too. He said that Daewoo would compensate its client and did not want to see him dissatisfied.
Published in The Express Tribune, April 19th, 2011.
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