PHC serves contempt notice on top officials of prisons department

Prisons Dept employees upgrading

PESHAWAR: The Peshawar High Court on Thursday issued contempt of court notice to top officials of the provincial government for non-compliance with the court order on upgrading the employees of Prisons Department from BPS-1 to 15.

A two-member bench comprising Justice Nisar Hussain Khan and Justice Lal Jan Khattak issued the notice to top officials of the KP government. They were directed to reply as why not contempt of court proceedings should be initiated against them for non-compliance with the court decision.

The bench issued the notice on a contempt petition of the KP Prisons Department employees (warders and assistant superintendents) filed through their lawyer Qazi Jawad Ihsanullah.

The high court in its decision passed on May 25 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.

During hearing, the lawyer submitted that the government was not implementing the court decision, which amount to contempt of court and thus contempt proceeding would be initiated against the official respondents.

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 special allowance to secretary Home and Tribal Affairs. He had also proposed the issuance of the allowance 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 rather to comply the decision 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.