26 months on: IHC orders health secretary to release salaries

Instructs Ayub Sheikh to pay salaries or explain himself in court.

ISLAMABAD: The Islamabad High Court directed the federal secretary health to release the salaries of 17 employees — which have been withheld for over the past 26 months — by March 31. In case of failure to comply, he will have to appear before the court on the same date.

Heading the bench, Justice Noorul Haq N Qureshi ordered National Health Services, Regulation and Coordination (NHSRC) Secretary Ayub Sheikh to immediately release the salaries while hearing a case filed by NHSRC employees against the non-implementation of a previous IHC order to release their salaries and regularise them.

Nisar Anjum Shakir, a petitioner, said they were deputed to the ministry from the National Council for Homoeopathy in May 2012 to fill vacancies caused by a ban on new hiring. Shakir said 35 employees were accepted as regular employees, but when the name of the ministry was changed, officials refused to regularise them. “Six to seven of the 35 are still getting salaries,” Shakir claimed.

Later, NHSRC Secretary Sheikh said the ministry is bound to obey court orders and he will write to the Accountant General of Pakistan to release their salaries.

He said they have also filed their reply before the court.

Published in The Express Tribune, March 26^th, 2015.