PESHAWAR: The Peshawar High Court has directed the Khyber Pakhtunkhwa government and provincial Culture and Tourism Authority to respond to a petition of 46 CTA employees against the government’s ‘attempt’ to change their employment status from regular to contractual one under a new law.

After holding preliminary hearing, a bench consisting of Justice Syed M Attique Shah and Justice Shakeel Ahmad directed the provincial secretaries of the culture and tourism and law department and CTA director-general to file comments on the plea within a fortnight.

It fixed the next hearing for May 24 asking the government not to act against the petitioners.

The petitioners included 46 CTA employees, including managers, deputy managers, assistants, clerks, technicians, drivers and others.

They requested the court to declare illegal several of the office orders and notifications of the government through which, they said, it had tried to change the status of the employees of the erstwhile Tourism Corporation Khyber Pakhtunkhwa (TCKP), which was later absorbed into the authority.

Stops CTA from acting against 46 staff members for filing petition

The petitioners claimed that in Nov last year, the provincial cabinet had approved certain amendments to the KP Tourism Act, 2019, which were in favour of the employees, but now the tourism department had been trying to reverse the said amendments.

They requested the court to declare illegal that attempt to withdraw the proposed amendments to the law by the department.

The respondents in the petition included the provincial government through its chief secretary, TCKP managing director, CTA director-general, secretaries of law, establishment, culture and tourism departments, and tourism minister.

The petitioners’ lawyer, Mohammad Yasir Khattak, said the Sarhad Tourism Corporation, later named as TCKP, was established by the provincial government in 1991.

He said the petitioners were first appointed and later regularised in different pay scales in the corporation.

The counsel said the BoD of the corporation decided on June 21, 1999, to constitute a committee to consider and scrutinise service rules.

He added that the board had decided that until service rules were approved by it, the Civil Servants Act as applied to other government employees would govern the service matters of the corporation.

Mr Khattak said the provincial assembly passed the KP Tourism Bill in 2019 leading to the formation of the CTA.

He added that under Section 8 of that law, the authority should take over the administrative, financial and regulatory control of all activities, offices, projects and centres of the Corporation, directorates and institutes in the prescribed manner.

The counsel said fearing the change of their service status from regular to contractual one, some employees had moved the high court, which ruled on Nov 29, 2019, that the intention of the legislature was clear that the employees should continue to enjoy all benefits admissible to them and should be entitled to receive their salary and other benefits as if they had continued to work against the existing cadre or post.

He also said the court had also held that Section 32 of the Act pertained to the status of employment in future and it didn’t apply to the petitioners or the existing employees.

The counsel said the TCKP BoD decided on June 24, 2020, that the entire staff of the corporation would be inducted in the CTA and their services should be protected, but some notifications issued later mentioned the term ‘long-term contract’ showing the intentions of the government to change the employees service status from regular to contractual one.

He insisted that any government move to change the service status of the regularised employees to that of contractual ones would be illegal.

Published in Dawn, May 1st, 2022