SC asks if there is any govt in Sindh

KARACHI: The Supreme Court (SC) on Thursday took an exception to the hundreds of excessive appointments made in the Sindh Health Department, and observed that the administration can be seen nowhere in the provincial government as no job is available without bribe.

Hearing the petition of one Khuda Bux and others against the non issuance of appointment letters in the Health Department’s Mirpurkhas district office, the SC’s three-member bench, headed by Justice Gulzar Ahmed, observed that the health department had appointed 307 people on lower-grade posts against the 27 sanctioned posts. The court observed that government officials had sold appointment letters to people who had bought their jobs by selling their livestock and valuables.

The bench observed that if such a situation were to continue, then one day all the aggrieved persons would besiege the high-ups of the government and they would find no place to escape.

The court observed that the provincial administration seems to be nowhere, as every government officer is running the government according to his own wishes by appointing hundreds of people against limited sanctioned posts. The bench observed that it seems that offer letters have been issued to hundreds of people after obtaining money, despite the fact that there were no such sanctioned posts.

The court took an exception to the non-filing of comments by the health department with regard to the appointments in the department’s Mirpurkhas office.

The health officer submitted that a case has been registered against the former district health officer, who has now retired from service. He informed the bench that advertisements had been published for fresh appointments in the health department.

The court observed that the health department once approved the appointment process and later revoked it without declaring the appointment process as illegal. The bench directed the Sindh additional advocate general to submit a concise statement with regard to the appointments in the health department’s Mirpurkhas district office. In the meantime, the court suspended the operation of publishing advertisements for fresh appointments, and ordered that no fresh appointments shall be made on the basis of the new advertisements until the next date of hearing.