PESHAWAR: Accepting the plea of over 260 former employees of the Islamia College Peshawar, the Peshawar High Court has ordered the University of Peshawar to immediately release their pension withheld since August this year.

A bench consisting of Justice Lal Jan Khattak and Justice Sahibzada Asadullah ordered the respondents, including the UoP, to make all due pension payments to the petitioners forthwith until any decision was taken by a committee constituted by the higher education department to determine their status.

It declared that as pension payment was necessary for the well-being and peace of mind of the retirees as well as it was their right, their petition was accepted by the court.

The petition was jointly filed by former ICP associate professor Sher Haider and 260 other pensioners.

The UoP has stopped the payment of pension to the petitioners insisting that after the establishment of the ICUP, the ICP was no longer its constituent college and therefore, the pension for petitioners should be released by the ICUP.

The counsel for petitioners, Nazeer Ahmad, said his clients were pensioners of the UoP as they’d either retired on attaining the age of superannuation or their family members were the former staff members.

The bench ruled that the respondents had insisted that the university was unable to pay those benefits to the petitioners due to financial constraints but didn’t produce records to prove the assertion.

Published in Dawn, December 27th, 2022