PHC suspends order to place OGDCL employees in surplus pool

PESHAWAR: The Peshawar High Court on Thursday suspended the federal government order of placing employees of Oil and Gas Development Company Limited (OGDCL) in the surplus pool and sought reply before next hearing into the case.

A two-member bench comprising Justice Qaiser Rashid Khan and Justice Muhammad Ibrahim Khan suspended the order. Nine officers of OGDCL in BPS-17, including Taj Muhammad and others, had challenged the federal government decision to place 42 officers including the petitioners and 320 employees in the surplus pool. Khalid Anwar had filed the petition on their behalf.

The lawyer submitted before the bench that the petitioners were appointed in the OGDCL in 1996 in the Pakistan People’s Party-led federal government. He submitted the Pakistan Muslim League-Nawaz-led federal government in 1997 removed them from service after declaring the appointments political.

The lawyer informed the bench that the PPP-led federal government again restored the services of sacked employees through ‘The Sacked Employees (reinstatement) Act 2010’ including the petitioners.

Khalid Anwar, the petitioners’ lawyer, submitted that the PML-N-led federal government once again started alleged revengeful policy against them to remove them from service. As a first step, he said, the board of directors of OGDCL, the largest oil and gas explorer in the country, placed the petitioners, including 42 restored officers and 372 employees in the surplus pool. He feared that they would soon again be removed from service as political revenge.

The lawyer pointed out that some officers and employees from Sindh province had taken stay order in the federal government decision to place them in the surplus pool. In 1997 the PML-N government terminated all government appointments made by PPP in 1995 and 1996, calling them ‘political’ ones. These employees approached the court for their reinstatement and took their case to the Supreme Court level, but failed to convince the judges.  The situation stayed this way until a decade later when in 2010 the ruling PPP government introduced the SEA and managed to get it passed from both the National Assembly and Senate by the end of 2010.