PHC bars govt from changing work status of tourism employees.

PESHAWAR -- A Peshawar High Court bench on Tuesday stopped the provincial government from changing the employment status of the tourism department's employees as civil servants and sought replies from the secretaries of law and tourism departments on a petition against different provisions of a recently enacted law.

Chief Justice Waqar Ahmad Seth and Justice Abdul Shakoor issued the order after holding preliminary hearing into a petition jointly filed by 43 employees of the tourism department, including Zeeshan Khan and others, fearing that the enactment of the Khyber Pakhtunkhwa Tourism Act, 2019, would deprive them of the status of government employees.

Yasir Khattak, lawyer for the petitioners, said the KP Tourism Act, 2019, was enacted lately providing the establishment of the KP Culture and Tourism Authority (KPCTA) at provincial level.

Petition filed in PHC fears new law will make those staffers contractuals

He said under Section 8 of that law, after the notification of the establishment of the Authority, it would take over administrative, financial and regulatory control of all activities, offices, projects and centres of the Sarhad Tourism Corporation, directorates of culture and that of tourist services, and Pak-Austrian Institute of Tourism and Hotel Management, Swat.

The lawyer said the law provided that the employees of the corporation and institute should be examined by a scrutiny committee to be constituted in the prescribed manner, which would recommend to the board of governors of the KPCTA for their retention in service of the Authority or not.

He added that the employees of the corporation and the institute, whose services were regularised under the Act by the board, should be governed in line with the service regulation to be made under the Act.

The lawyer said his clients were permanent employees...