Despite opposition, the treasury members in Sindh Assembly on Thursday voted a bill into law to reinstate the retrenched government employees with all perks and benefits and retrospective effect, during the Sindh Assembly session on Thursday. With the passage of the bill, some 619 employees of the Sindh government who were laid off between February 3, 1997 and February 18, 2008 would be restored to their jobs with all benefits. The Bill will now be called the Sindh Sacked Employees Reinstatement Act 2016.
The opposition rejected the law, saying that the government had skipped standards of merit to provide jobs to the deserving people. However, treasury termed the sacking of those employees as political 'revenge'. "A dictator sacked them [employees] as political victimization," Chief Minister Sindh, Syed Murad Ali Shah told the house.
Sindh Food and Parliamentary Affairs Minister Nisar Ahmed Khuhro laid the bill in the house seeking the legislators support for its passage. He said that a committee had been set up to see the cases of retrenched employees, which approved 619 applications, who had lost jobs purely to a political victimisation. A total of 1900 applicants had applied for the restoration, he said.
In line with the committee's recommendations, he said that the sacked employees had already been reinstated to their positions. The passage of bill, he said, will ratify the employees' restoration with a retrospective effect. "Shaheed Benazir Bhutto would say if providing jobs is a crime, we will continue committing it again and again," he remarked. PMLN's lawmaker, Muhammad Ismail Raho said that the government should have adopted the law before reinstating the employees. "Why did not the government restore the sacked employees of police and education departments," he questioned, saying that the government should restore the employees retrenched till 2016.
PTI's Samar Ali Khan said that if the government did not follow a merit criterion, the good governance could not be ensured. "We have to run a government not a welfare organization," he told the house, saying that giving jobs was good but on the basis of merit. MQM's parliamentary leader, Syed Sardar Ahmed asked the government to provide a list of all restored employees with the criterion for their reinstatement and reasons of their retrenchment. "We should be provided with a list of the restored employee so that we could see how they had been reinstated and why had been laid off," he said.
Defending the legislation, Murad Ali Shah said the restored employees had been provided with jobs on merit. "A dictator had sacked them to victimize on the basis of politics," he said, adding that the sacked employees had been restored in 2008 after the PPP had assumed power in 2008.
The treasury turned down a privilege motion of PTI's Khurrum Sher Zaman Khan, calling it as 'out of order'. The motion was about the unrestricted sales of liquor at restaurants despite his resolution, which the house had adopted two months back to ban the illegal services of alcohol at public places. The motion said that the non-implementation of a resolution had basically dishonored him as member of the provincial assembly.
Sindh Excise and Taxation Minister, Mukesh Kumar Chawla told the house during questions and answers session that there had been 128 licensed bars selling liquor. Non-Muslims are entitled to such licensees to run sales of liquor, he said, adding that "since 2013 the government had allotted no new license for liquor sales".
The treasury tabled the Sindh Transparency and Right to Information Bill in the house. A committee was set up to review the bill and present its report in house on September 29. In light of the report, the bill will be passed. Members of the committee are: Nisar Khuhro, Sindh Health Minister, Dr Sikandar Mandhro, Syed Nasir Hussain Shah, Pir Mujeeb-ul-Haq, Sharmila Farooque, Syed Owais Shah, Syed Sardar Ahmed, Moin Amir Pirzada, Shaharyar Khan Mahar, Samar Ali Khan, Haji Shafi Muhammad Jamote, and Nand Kumar.
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