ISLAMABAD: About 70,000 employees of the so-called strategic organisations face a problem of different kind: there is no court they could turn to for redressal of their grievances.When the Removal from Service Special Powers Ordinance was in force, informed sources said, such employees could go for appeal against punishments to the Federal Service Tribunal, but after the repeal of the ordinance they were now governed by National Command Authority (NCA) Act, 2010, with almost no remedy against punishments.

The NCA Act, 2010, which was first promulgated in 2007 by former president Gen Pervez Musharraf, does not mention any appellant authority for the employees.

Such employees include scientists, engineers, doctors, law officers, human resource officers and other technical personnel working for the Pakistan Atomic Energy Commission, National Engineering and Scientific Commission, Pakistan Space and Upper Atmosphere Research Commission (Suparco), Maritime Technologies Complex, Khan Research Laboratories, Air Weapons Complex, Project Management Organisation, National Development Complex, and Defence Science and Technology Organisation.

They have filed a petition in the Supreme Court with a request to be told where they should go for such remedy.

The petition, filed by the employees through Barrister Raja Saifur Rehman, said that when they approached the Federal Service Tribunal they were told that it (the tribunal) had no jurisdiction to hear their appeals.

Consequently, they went to high courts because all strategic organisations are run by statutory rules and are working for the federation, but high courts too expressed inability to take up their cases.

“If we collect a data of decided cases from the Supreme Court, the Federal Service Tribunal and High Courts of Pakistan, we will see that more than 80 per cent of the cases were decided in favour of the employees. It means that the departments/organisations had acted in a biased, discriminatory, arbitrary and unjustified manner... In view of these facts, some reasonable forum (court) has to be provided to the employees of strategic organisations for redressal of their grievances,” Barrister Rehman said.