SHC petition: Govt to explain why vaccinators remain on contract

KARACHI:

The Sindh High Court (SHC), on Friday, called for replies from the provincial chief secretary and health secretary on a petition filed against the non-regularisation of vaccinators’ contractual jobs and payment of remunerations for the last four years.

More than a dozen vaccinators had gone to court against the chief secretary, health secretary and Umerkot district’s executive health officer for not regularising them despite the fact that they qualify for a permanent position due to their service period.

Ashiq Ali, one of the petitioners who had filed the petition in 2012, said Hyderabad health director-general had appointed them as vaccinator in basic-pay-scale 6 for a year under the Global Alliance for Vaccination and Immunisation programme. He told the judges that the programme was extended till 2009 and the Sindh government’s Expanded Programme on Immunisation project director had drawn the authorities’ attention towards regularisation of 700 vaccinators working on daily wages since 2005. “The finance secretary had also compiled a summary for the vaccinators’ regularisation and forwarded it to the Sindh chief minister but no action has been taken,” said the petitioners’ lawyer, Barrister Zamir Ahmed Ghumro.

The lawyer added that the authorities have stopped the petitioners’ salaries since June 2009.

During the previous hearing, provincial law officer Abdul Jaleel Zubedi had informed that a similar case regarding regularisation of ad hoc and contractual employees was pending before the Supreme Court (SC). On Friday, another law officer, Sibtain Mehmood, produced a copy of the SC order passed on October 30, 2012 but he informed that the case is different.

Published in The Express Tribune, February 16^th, 2014.