Deputations cancelled: All officers to report back to parent depts, AAG tells SHC

Superior courts, including SHC had ruled that all officers working on deputation be sent back to parent departments.

KARACHI:

All deputations from one department to another in Sindh have since been cancelled and all officers have been asked to report to their parent departments.

This was stated by an additional advocate general here on Friday before a division bench of the Sindh High Court that was hearing a petition challenging the transfer of Ram Chand, an assistant executive engineer of the Public Health Department (PHD). He was sent to the Industries and Commerce department and was posted as the estate engineer for SITE at the Super Highway. This is considered to be a very lucrative posting.

The petition was filed by a social worker, Rana Faizul-Hasan, who in a public interest litigation submitted that superior courts, including the SHC had ruled that all officers working on deputation in different departments should be sent back to their original departments but the SITE MD and other officials were violating the orders of the court.

The petitioner named the chief secretary, secretary of the S&GAD, secretary of the PHD and SITE MD in the petition. He asked the court to declare that Ram Chand is holding the post of estate engineer illegally and unlawfully.

When the petition came up for hearing, the AAG Sindh filed comments on behalf of the PHD secretary PHD, according to which the transfer and posting orders of Ram Chand have been recalled in compliance with an earlier SHC judgment. As the main respondent, Ram Chand, was not present, the bench gave him one last opportunity to plead his case and adjourned the hearing, ordering the office of the court to fix the petition after a week.

Published in The Express Tribune, November 27^th, 2011.