Punjab Service Tribunal: Four members removed

‘No names recommended for fresh appointments’.

LAHORE:

The Punjab government has terminated the contracts of four Punjab Service Tribunal (PST) members in compliance with a Supreme Court order from March 25, The Express Tribune has learnt.

Kareem Bakhsh Abid, Tariq Ayub Chaudhry, Abdul Majeed Chaudhry and Shafiq Hussain Bokhari, who were appointed to the tribunal after they retired as civil servants, have had their contracts terminated.

Tribunal members Ijaz Zaigham and Najam Saeed had resigned earlier this year after the Supreme Court order from more than six months ago. The court had directed the Punjab government to enact fresh legislation to ensure that the tribunal members were qualified to be high court judges or serving district and sessions judges or senior civil servants.

The PST is now left with just a chairman, Justice (retired) Saeed Akhtar, and six empty member seats, though it had been virtually dysfunctional since March, with the four members deciding to wait for marching orders from the Punjab government rather than resign.

In the first week of September, the PST chairman wrote to the chief secretary urging him to quickly post new members, as the backlog had risen to 8,000 cases.

The tribunal deals with government employees’ service matters. A Punjab government official said that at full strength, the tribunal decided around 500 cases a month. With just the chairman to hear cases, the rate of filing far exceeds the rate of disposal of cases at present, he added.

An Irrigation Department officer said he had been waiting for three months for the tribunal to hear his appeal against a punishment handed out to him by the irrigation secretary. “My junior colleagues have been promoted while I have been held back because of the penalty. I am anxious to get the penalty removed so I can be eligible for a promotion,” he said.

A Punjab government official said that no names had been recommended to the Lahore High Court chief justice for fresh appointments to the tribunal.

Published in The Express Tribune, October 8^th, 2013.