SSGC, PSO told to follow law in employees’ regularisation case

The Sindh High Court issued notices to Sui Southern Gas Company (SSGC) and Paksitan State Oil (PSO) on a petition of contract employees seeking regularisation of their service.

The petitioners, including Mohammad Umair, submitted that they were contract employees working at different posts at the SSGC and the PSO and had already completed the prescribed

period of probation.

Their counsel, Shoa-un-Nabi, submitted that the petitioners were appointed to different posts on a contract basis and they were eligible to be regularised under the office memorandum of August 29, 2008, issued by the establishment division.

He submitted that the SSGC and the PSO were not regularising them on the premise that they were not their employees, but the employees of a third-party contractor.

He further stated that his clients had been continuously working on permanent posts in the respondent companies, and contended that superior courts had already passed judgments in identical cases in which contract employees were regularised.

The counsel also referred to a recent judgment of the SHC in which the court had directed the SSGC to consider the cases of more than 170 contract employees for regularisation within two months without discrimination and in accordance with the law and a Supreme Court judgment.

The court was requested to order regularisation of the petitioners and restrain respondents from taking any coercive action against the petitioners till the disposal of the petitions.

A division bench headed by Justice Abdul Rasool Memon, after the preliminary hearing of the petitions, issued notices to the SSGC and the PSO for July 31 and in the meantime directed the respondents to act strictly in accordance with the law.