Prisons Dept employees file contempt petition against KP govt top officials

By Akhtar Amin
November 22, 2016

PESHAWAR: The Khyber Pakhtunkhwa Prisons Department employees have filed a contempt of court petition in the Peshawar High Court (PHC) against top officials of the provincial government for non-compliance with the court order on upgrading them from BPS-1 to 15.

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The KP Prisons Department employees (warders and assistant superintendents) filed contempt petition through their lawyer Qazi Jawad Ihsanullah against chief secretary, secretary Home and Tribal Affairs and secretary Finance.

The PHC fixed January 18, 2017 for hearing the contempt petition and also issued notice to the respondent officials in the petition. A two-member bench comprising Justice Waqar Ahmad Seth and Justice Musarrat Hilali had passed the verdict on May 25. It had directed the Khyber Pakhtunkhwa government to either upgrade the Prisons Department employees from BPS-1 to BPS-15 within 30 days or issue them a special allowance equal to their normal monthly pay.

It was stated in the petition that only Inspector General (IG) Prisons, in compliance with the court’s decision, had forwarded a summary on issuance of a Prison Allowance to secretary Home and Tribal Affairs in which he had proposed the issuance to the Prisons employees from grade-1 to 20.

The counsel said the summary for issuance of prison allowance had been consigned to the cold storage. He pointed out that now the Home Department had on October 26, issued a letter to additional registrar of the PHC, in which it was stated that the petitioners were getting prison and ration allowances in the salaries and they had no right to be upgraded.

It was stated that the KP government had not challenged the decision of the PHC within 90 days and that was why the KP government was bound to implement the decision. The petitioners prayed the high court to start contempt of court proceedings against the officials concerned for not implementing the court’s decision.

First, the KP Prisons Department employees (warders and assistant superintendents) had filed the petition against the provincial government for ignoring them in upgradation of their scales for the last five years.

The petitioners submitted in the petition before the bench that the petitioners were government servants employed in the Prison Department Khyber Pakhtunkhwa. It said the provincial government had on June 30, 2015 issued a notification whereby all the provincial government employees from BPS 1 to 5 were upgraded by two pay scales and those in BPS 6 to 15 were promoted by one pay scale.

The petitioners raised the issue of upgradation with the officials concerned, who forwarded their case to the Finance Department. It said that the Finance Department sent a letter to the officials concerned on October 27 last year that said that the prisons employees were not entitled to upgradation as they were already getting prison allowance equal to one-month initial basic and ration allowance of Rs1000 per month.

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