Senate passes sacked employees’ reinstatement bill

Opposition boycotts session; Qureshi’s in-camera briefing postponed.

ISLAMABAD: The sacked employees’ reinstatement bill was passed by the Senate amid protests and boycott by the Opposition that also barred Foreign Minister Shah Mahmood Qureshi from giving an in-camera briefing to members of the upper house of parliament on the recently held Pakistan-US strategic dialogue.

Qureshi had promised to give a closed-door briefing to the Senators but acrimony broke out when the government pushed the reinstatement of sacked employees’ bill for passing. Opposition parties PML-N, PML-Q and JI joined hands and demanded that the government send the bill to the standing committee of the House instead of putting it up for a vote. The National Assembly has already passed the bill and now after the Senate’s approval the legislation will be sent to the president to make it an Act.

Parliamentary Leader PML-N Ishaq Dar opposed the bill in its present form, terming it a declaration of mistrust in the system.

He was of the view that it would be tantamount to overturning decisions of the superior judiciary, as even those whose removal from service had been upheld by the courts, would be reinstated through the blanket legislation. He said the bill must be referred to the standing committee concerned for input before it was passed.

Mian Raza Rabbani, the architect of the legislation meant to provide relief to the employees dismissed from service during the second tenure of PML-N, said that all the employees had been sacked without following the proper procedure for their only crime was that they had been inducted during PPP’s days in power.

Leader of the House in the Senate Nayyar Hussain Bokhari pointed out that nobody moved an amendment in the bill under rule 111.  On his pressing the chairman Senate pushed the motion for adoption of the bill.

Opposition parties boycotted the session in protest against what they called bulldozing the legislation.

In the absence of opposition the House decided to postpone Shah Mahmood Qureshi’s in-camera briefing.

Published in The Express Tribune, November 11^th, 2010.