The Sindh High Court (SHC) has directed the Pakistan Central Cotton Committee (PCCC) to process the payment of monthly emoluments as 20 percent ad hoc relief allowance to its employees within two weeks.
The employees of PCCC had approached the Honourable High Court vide Constitutional Petition NoD-4090/2012 and subsequently the SHC directed respondents, including the Secretary of PCCC Gul Mohammad (respondent No4) to process the payment of allowance in compliance with the notification of the Ministry of Finance.
According to a copy of the court order dated February 6 this year: "The Learned DAG (deputy attorney-general) requests for time to file a reply/counter-affidavit. Murtaza Wahab submits that though after notice of the contempt application, respondent No 4 has paid salaries to the employees of the Committee, however, full amount of the monthly emoluments as 20 percent adhoc relief allowance as granted by the Ministry of finance is not being paid. We would therefore, while granting two weeks' time to the respondents for filing their respective replies/counter-affidavits directs them to process the payment of the aforesaid allowance to the employees of the Committee so that such be paid within two weeks from today without fail."
However, employees of the committee claimed that PCCC had still not paid the said allowances in line with court orders. Sources said that Secretary PCCC Gul Ahmed wrote to the Vice-President of PCCC for his approval to release the pending dues. Sources said that more than 2,000 employees of PCCC had been deprived of their revised emoluments for the last five months. However, they said that other federal government-run departments had been disbursing revised salaries since the ministry's notification.
A PCCC official, Ghulam Mohiuddin, lambasted the authorities concerned for not obeying the ministry's orders and hoped that after the SHC orders, employees of the committee would get their dues in a few days. "The PCCC, which is under the administrative control of the Ministry of Textile Industry, which had already been directed to implement the Finance Division's Notification effective from July 1 last year."
Mohiuddin said that the employees had to file a petition in the SHC because of the delaying tactics employed by the PCCC subsequent to which the court had ordered to pay the emoluments within two weeks Sources said that PCCC had recently increased the Cotton Cess rate from Rs 20 to Rs 50 with effect from July 1 last year, which had strengthened the financial position of the PCCC.