PHC upholds decision on payment of minimum Rs17,500 wages

PESHAWAR: Peshawar High Court (PHC) has upheld the judgment of a labour court on the direction to a cellular company providing services in the province to pay minimum wages of Rs17,500 to its employees under the Payment of Wages Act.

In a detailed judgment authored by Justice Ijaz Anwar Khan, the bench ruled that the petition filed against the decisions of labour court by the cellular company is hereby dismissed on non-maintainability.

The cellular company had filed the petitions seeking an order of the court to declare the decisions of the labour court in Haripur district without lawful authority and of no legal effect and accordingly set aside the same.

The company also requested to remand the matter back to the respondent National Industrial Relations Commission with direction to decide the petitioner’s appeal afresh on merits. It is further respectfully prayed that till the final disposal of the captioned petition, the respondent labour court may be restrained from recovering the amount directed to be paid by the petitioner in the order passed on January 7, 2016.

“The jurisdiction of the National Industrial Relations Commission established under section 54 of the IRA, 2012 remained the same as it had jurisdiction either under the repealed IRA, 1969, IRO, 2002 or IRA, 2008 with a little modification that earlier its jurisdiction was restricted to unfair labour practice and matters of Registration of Union and now it can also adjudicate industrial disputes and individual grievances under section 33 of the IRA, 2012,” the bench ruled in its detailed judgment.

The court observed that before 18th Constitutional Amendment, Payment of Wages Act, 1936 applied to the whole Pakistan, but since labour matters were entrusted to the provinces, as such, Payment of Wages Act (PWA) of 2013 was promulgated by Khyber Pakhtunkhwa. Section 17 of the PWA of 2013 is Pari-Meteria to the time tested law i.e. Payment of Wages Act, 1936.

It said that counsel for the petitioners laid much stress that for maintaining appeal before the Wages Authority deposit of the decretal amounts to negating the right of appeal and also to the effect that in such cases writ petition can be maintained as the remedy of appeal cannot be considered as efficacious or alternative.

However, the bench stated that this argument fails in view of judgments of the august Supreme Court of Pakistan on this ground too that till such time the remedy of appeal exists on the statute book and condition of deposit of decretal amount is mandatory, the same cannot be bypassed to invoke the constitutional jurisdiction of the high court.

“Now coming to the main objection about the maintainability of the claim/petition before the Wages Authority on the ground that the petitioner being Trans-provincial Establishment within the meaning of the Industrial Relations Act, 2012, as such, the Provincial Wages Authority established under the PWA of 2013 cannot entertain petition against such establishment,” it said, adding that the claim of the petitioner company cropped up after the Eighteenth Constitutional Amendment, when the concurrent legislative list was done away and some federal ministries including Labour Ministry were devolved upon the provinces.

“Every province has promulgated their respective labour laws but the confusion was created when the Federal Government promulgated Industrial Relations Act, 2012 (Act X of 2012).

In the Act of 2012 the powers and functions of the Labour Courts were also entrusted to National Industrial Relations Commission established under the provisions of Act of 2012, while no provision was retained for the establishment of Labour Court,” the bench observed in the judgment.

It said that in the claim, petition before the labour court filed by the employees they brought the grievances for not paying the monthly wages under the minimum wages fixed by the provincial government at the relevant time.

Similarly, the court explained that section 1(3)(d) made applicable the provisions of PWA of 2012 also to all factories, industrial and commercial establishments under the control of the federal government or provincial government, which are situated in the territorial jurisdiction of the province.

On the other hand, the Khyber Pakhtunkhwa Directorate of Labour has directed all the inspection staff in the province to start taking action against the private educational institutions, health centres and security agencies if they failed to pay minimum monthly wages of Rs17,500 to their staff through banks.

Official sources told The News that the Directorate at an emergency meeting directed the labour inspectors to ensure payment of minimum wages to the staff of private organisations and take legal action against the defaulters after the deadline.