SHC moved against appointments of SBCA DG and Karachi commissioner

The Sindh High Court on Monday issued notices to the chief secretary, local government secretary and others on petitions against the appointments of the Sindh Building Control Authority (SBCA) director general (DG) and Karachi commissioner.

Petitioner Syed Mehmood Akhtar Naqvi had submitted in the petition that the Sindh government had given the additional charge of the SBCA DG to Sindh Ombudsman Additional Chief Secretary Shamsuddin Soomro. He submitted that the appointment of a non-technical officer as the SBCA DG, which was a technical post, was against the relevant laws and violation of superior court judgments that had laid down that technical posts must not be filled with non-technical persons.

According to the petitioner, the impugned assignment of additional charge to the provincial ombudsman additional chief secretary was illegal and also prejudicial to all such officers who were entitled to be posted as the SBCA DG.

A division bench of the SHC headed by Justice Nadeem Akhtar, after the preliminary hearing of the petition, issued notices to the chief secretary, local government secretary and others, and called their comments in the second week of January.

The same bench also issued notices to the chief secretary, a provincial law officer, the Karachi Metropolitan Corporation (KMC) Administrator Iftikhar Shallwani and others on a petition against giving the additional charge of the Karachi commissioner to Shallwani.

The petitioner had submitted that the KMC administrator was assigned the additional charge of the Karachi commissioner, which was against the law and prejudicial to all such officers who were entitled to be posted as the commissioner. The high court directed the chief secretary and others to file comments on the petition in the second week of January.

PSM retrenchment

The SHC directed a counsel for the Pakistan Steel Mills union leader to satisfy the court on the maintainability of his petition that challenged the decision of the PSM to fire more than 4,000 employees.

Hearing a petition of the PSM employee union’s general secretary, a high court bench headed by Justice Nadeem Akhtar inquired the petitioner counsel about the nature of work of the PSM employees as several sections of the steel mills had been shut down.

The SHC asked what the purpose of the employees was when the PSM was not functional. The counsel submitted that the union had filed a petition to safeguard the interest of the employees.

The bench observed that none of the employee was part of the petition and the instant petition had been filed by the employees’ union. The high court directed both the petitioner and his counsel to satisfy the bench with regard to the maintainability of the petition in view of extraordinary circumstances due to which the impugned decision had been taken by the PSM.