Lower-grade employees: SC seeks details on plots allotment

ISLAMABAD/ LAHORE:

The Supreme Court on Monday sought details from the Federal Government Employees Housing Foundation on allotment of plots to lower-grade government employees.

A division bench, comprising Justice Jawad S Khawaja and Justice Dost Muhammad Khan, directed the foundation to present a detailed report within a week on the allotment of plots to government employees of grade 1 to 5 in various housing schemes.

“Has this country been made for only elite class; aren’t the senior bureaucrats getting salaries,” Justice Khawaja observed, while hearing a petition filed by the foundation against an Islamabad High Court (IHC) verdict.

He said that it was very strange mosques were built on encroached land and people throng there to offer prayers without questioning the sanctity of the mosque. “No one tells them that prayers being offered in illegally built mosques are not permissible. There are clear edicts on this issue,” he observed.

The IHC had ordered the housing foundation to allot plots to 29 grade-4 employees of the district courts.

Earlier, the foundation’s lawyer, Abdur Rehman Siddiqui challenged the IHC order saying that the court had ordered allotment of plots to all employees of the lower courts, although there was fixed quota for the employees from grade one to five. He prayed the court to quash the IHC verdict.

In response, Justice Khawaja said that quota in allotment of plots itself was a discrimination. “If the quota system is followed its means only grade-22 officers will be able to get plots and the naib qasids and lower-grade employees will not [get plots] as if they are neither citizens of the country nor they have any family,” he said.

Justice Dost Muhammad Khan observed that the civic authorities demolished settlements of the poor residents overnight questioning, “If the plots of any influential person or senior bureaucrat have ever been confiscated.”

The court ordered the housing foundation to submit a detailed report on the allotment of plots to the lower-grade staff and adjourned the hearing till next week.

Published in The Express Tribune, August 4^th, 2015.