PESHAWAR: A Peshawar High Court bench on Tuesday stopped the provincial government from changing the employment status of the tourism department’s employees as civil servants and sought replies from the secretaries of law and tourism departments on a petition against different provisions of a recently enacted law.

Chief Justice Waqar Ahmad Seth and Justice Abdul Shakoor issued the order after holding preliminary hearing into a petition jointly filed by 43 employees of the tourism department, including Zeeshan Khan and others, fearing that the enactment of the Khyber Pakhtunkhwa Tourism Act, 2019, would deprive them of the status of government employees.

Yasir Khattak, lawyer for the petitioners, said the KP Tourism Act, 2019, was enacted lately providing the establishment of the KP Culture and Tourism Authority (KPCTA) at provincial level.

Petition filed in PHC fears new law will make those staffers contractuals

He said under Section 8 of that law, after the notification of the establishment of the Authority, it would take over administrative, financial and regulatory control of all activities, offices, projects and centres of the Sarhad Tourism Corporation, directorates of culture and that of tourist services, and Pak-Austrian Institute of Tourism and Hotel Management, Swat.

The lawyer said the law provided that the employees of the corporation and institute should be examined by a scrutiny committee to be constituted in the prescribed manner, which would recommend to the board of governors of the KPCTA for their retention in service of the Authority or not.

He added that the employees of the corporation and the institute, whose services were regularised under the Act by the board, should be governed in line with the service regulation to be made under the Act.

The lawyer said his clients were permanent employees of the government and their employment status couldn’t be changed under the law.

He feared that the petitioners would be made contractual employees making it easier for the government to remove them from service and appoint hand-picked people in their place.

The lawyer said the scrutiny of petitioners couldn’t be conducted as they had already been serving as civil servants.

CONVICTION SET ASIDE: A high court bench set aside the conviction of three people by an anti-terrorism court for the abduction of a Fata Secretariat officer’s son over three years ago.

Justice Roohul Amin Khan and Justice Ishtiaq Ibrahim accepted the appeals of Raja Gul, Younis and Nadeem observing that the evidence on record didn’t connect them with the commission of the offence.

The anti-terrorism court had convicted them and sentenced them to life imprisonment and Rs500,000 fine each.

An FIR was registered at the Hayatabad police station against unidentified people, while the three accused were charged under Section 365-A of Pakistan Penal Code and Section 7 of Anti-Terrorism Act after the abductee was freed on the payment of Rs3 million ransom.

Their counsel, Shabbir Hussain Gigyani, said the case was poorly investigated, while the prosecution witnesses recorded conflicting statements.

He also said the police violated the law by not conducting the identification parade of the accused.

Published in Dawn, November 6th, 2019