Displaced DG goes to court

Petitioner says mechanical engineer was appointed to a civil engineer’s post.

KARACHI: A grade-20 officer has gone to court over the appointment of a mechanical engineer to a civil engineer’s post. The constitutional petition, filed by Shamsuddin Sahito, was taken up at a division bench of the Sindh High Court comprising Justice Shahid Anwar Bajwa and Justice Tufail H Ebrahim on Wednesday.

According to Sahito, the Sindh government appointed him the director-general of the Sindh Workers Welfare Board on August 18 and he assumed charge on November 3. He was, however, replaced by Abdul Ghani Jokhio, a mechanical engineer. Upon realising the error, the government appointed Irshad Ansari but even this decision was illegal, argues Sahito. When the petition came up for hearing on Wednesday, Additional Advocate-General Sindh Adnan Karim Memon sought more time to file comments. Sahito’s lawyer Barrister Zamir A Ghumro opposed an adjournment on the grounds that this was the third time in a row that the government had asked for one and it was delaying the proceedings. Ghumro submitted that the current DG, Irshad Ansari, was not even coming forward. The court summoned Ansari to appear on December 8. The secretary of the labour department is also a respondent in the case.

Published in The Express Tribune, December 2^nd, 2010.