HYDERABAD: A Sindh High Court (SHC) division bench of the Hyderabad circuit has directed the provincial chief secretary (CS) to ensure launch of the Integrated Financial Management Information System (IFMIS) across Sindh so that employees of the local government (LG) councils also could receive salaries directly through bank accounts without delay from April 1.

Until then, the bench comprising Justice Nadeem Akhtar and Justice Khadim Hussain Tunio ordered, funds for salaries of the employees of the Sindh LG department be kept in an escrow account wherefrom salaries might be disbursed timely. A compliance report be submitted to the court by the chief secretary in 45 days, it added. The order was authored by Justice Tunio.

The bench issued the order on Wednesday it had reserved in the matter of a lower cadre employee BS-7 employee, Ghulam Rasool, and had called Additional CS (LG) Syed Najam Shah. He appeared before the court after it issued his bailable warrants for non-appearance and not submitting any reply. On March 7, Najam tendered unconditional apology and made a representation.

According to his case, Ghulam Rasool was appointed as junior clerk on April 23, 2012 in the LG department. He was first posted in the Union Council (UC) of Chanesar-I, Taluka Nawabshah, where he worked till Sept 15, 2014. He was then transferred to the office of the LG directorate, Shaheed Benazirabad Division, by the LG secretary. There he withdrew salary from UC Chanesar-I under the head of the directorate’s budget sanctioned vide order dated Nov 9, 2016. After that he was relieved from UC Chanesar-I.

In order to draw his salary from the directorate, he was required to have an identity (ID) made to get assigned himself a personal number for which he approached the respondents time and again, but the requests remained unattended. He was transferred to the Town Committee Bucheri where he was refused joining by Town Committee Bucheri chairman Mohammad Bachal Zardari, who appointed 71 employees on daily wages.

Then he returned to the Directorate General LG, Shaheed Benazirabad, but reportedly he has not received his salary since Jan 1, 2017. The court received comments from the LG director stating that the petitioner’s case was genuine and he repeatedly requested the higher authorities to issue his ID.

The Town Committee Bucheri chairman, who allegedly turned down his joining, filed comments while submitting that TC Bucheri, having been newly constituted, was still not receiving its own budget and employees were being paid from the account of Town Committee Dour.

The additional AG and assistant AG Sindh did not controvert the submissions of the petitioner’s counsel. The court noted it had come on record that identical cases came before the court every year where LG employees were left unpaid for one or other reason or on the pretext that budget was not available. However, they are supposed to be paid through the budget received by the heads of concerned departments.

The court’s order said that excuse was used by the TC chairman who stated 71 employees of TC Bucheri themselves were receiving salary from the Town Committee Dour’s budget.

The court said the additional CS of the local government stated before the court that no ID was required by the petitioner for release of his salary and the same was to be paid by the concerned department. Such ancient system for payment of wages in an advanced age could be deprecated when much more advanced modes of payment were available, it observed.

The SHC noted that following a strike in Nov 2021 by the All Pakistan Local Government Workers Foundation, Sindh chapter, for non-payment of salaries to employees, the Sindh government had taken an initiative to introduce the Integrated Financial Management Information System (IFMIS) in local councils to ensure timely payment of salaries and pensions to LG employees. A committee in that regard for moving salary payments online sat to discuss matter in Nov 2020 and 2022.

The court also directed the Sindh CS to ensure launch of the IFMIS across Sindh and to regulate salaries of LG council employees through that system to be sent directly into bank accounts of the employees without delay from April 1.

Published in Dawn, March 16th, 2023