LAHORE: The Supreme Court has ruled that a postman is not a ‘civil servant’ but falls in the category of ‘workman’ and remedy for redressal of service-related grievances of such employees lies with the National Industrial Relations Commission (NIRC).

Muhammad Ibrahim was appointed as a postman in 1987 and during his service he was assigned officiating postmaster at Qila Abdullah, Quetta district. He was alleged to have misappropriated public money belonging to the exchequer while making bogus payments in the Benazir Bhutto Income Support Programme (BISP).

He was proceeded against on certain charges, resulting in registration of a criminal case against him and after departmental inquiry was dismissed from service in 2012. In the criminal case the postman was sentenced to two years in jail in 2014.

However, the postman challenged his conviction before the Balochistan High Court and was acquitted in 2018.

In the meantime, the postman served grievance notice on the divisional superintendent of Quetta post office and thereafter filed a grievance petition before a labour court of Quetta.

The divisional superintendent did not join the proceedings and the petition was accepted.

The postman was reinstated into service.

The judgment of the Quetta labour court was also upheld by a labour appellate tribunal in 2014.

The post office department filed a constitutional petition in the SC.

A three-judge bench of the SC took up the petition and appointed senior lawyer Hafiz Tariq Nasim, an expert in service laws, as amicus curiae to assist it whether a postman was a civil servant or a workman.

The lawyer told the bench that a postman did not fall within the definition of ‘civil servant’, rather in view of nature of his duties he fully qualifies to be considered as workman.

He said Pakistan Post was a trans-provincial department having its offices in each province and also in the federal capital. Therefore, he said, the provisions of the National Industrial Relations Act 2012 would be applicable to the postman.

The bench, in its judgment, also declared that postman was a workman and not a civil servant and he could agitate his grievance before the NIRC.

Published in Dawn, December 11th, 2021