SC says all federal govt employees entitled to secretariat allowance

SC says federal govt cannot discriminate between its employees, directs govt to pay a 20 per cent allowance

ISLAMABAD: In a landmark decision, the Supreme Court (SC) on Tuesday directed the federal government to provide secretariat allowance to all of its employees without any discrimination.

This was ordered by a three-member bench of the apex court, headed by Justice Maqbool Baqar, as it heard a case relating to the provision of 20 per cent secretariat allowance to federal government employees.

The court remarked that the federal government cannot discriminate between its employees and directed the government to pay a 20 per cent secretariat allowance to all employees under federal government cadre.

Shoaib Shaheen, the counsel for the petitioner, argued that at the moment, the allowance is only being offered to those federal government employees who work in certain ministries. He informed the court that employees of institutions which operate under some of these ministries are deprived of the allowance.

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Annulling the verdict of the Islamabad High Court’s (IHC) divisional bench, the SC approved the plea of the petitioners after which all federal government employees have been entitled to secretariat allowance.

Earlier, a single-member bench of IHC had ruled in favour of giving allowance to all employees but a divisional bench of IHC had overturned that decision on the appeal of the federal government. Thus, the decision was challenged in the apex court. 

Published in The Express Tribune, February 5^th, 2020.