IHC sets aside demotion of 112 ZTBL employees.

Byline: Malik Asad

ISLAMABAD -- The Islamabad High Court (IHC) on Tuesday set aside demotion of 112 vice presidents of the Zarai Taraqiati Bank Limited (ZTBL) and also scrapped the order of the bank administration to retrieve the perks these officers received after being promoted.

IHC Chief Justice Athar Minallah observed that the order for demotion of employees was illegal because it was taken without approval of the ZTBL board of directors which had been non-functional for over three years.

The employees alleged that in a surprise move on March 6, around 150 employees of the bank were issued letters by the current management, informing them that the promotions they had earned back in 2015 and 2018 stood cancelled. This decision came as a shock because the employees had not even been provided a right of hearing before their demotion.

The high court noted that by virtually keeping one of the most important financial institutions in the public sector dysfunctional for three years, the federal government has failed in its statutory duty, inter alia, under the Bank Nationalisation Act, 1974.

Step declared illegal as it was taken without approval of the bank's board of directors

Such a failure definitely has profound consequences for the constitutionally guaranteed fundamental rights of the petitioners and the general public.

Justice Minallah had at a previous hearing restrained the ZTBL management from recovering the additional amount which the demoted assistant vice presidents were getting when they were promoted as vice presidents.

From 1960 to 2002, the ZTBL functioned as an attached government department. After the bank was reformed in 2002, it was converted into a public sector company whose affairs were to be run by a board of five to seven independent and tenured directors.

In 2005, the ZTBL board had decided to reform the service structure of employees. Accordingly, all existing employees were offered the option to shift from government-style employment terms to more corporate-style employment terms. This new structure was called 'options'.

In 2013 and 2018, the...