SHC orders CS to pay salaries to LG employees through bank accounts.

HYDERABAD -- A Sindh High Court (SHC) division bench of the Hyderabad circuit has directed the provincial chief secretary (CS) to ensure launch of the Integrated Financial Management Information System (IFMIS) across Sindh so that employees of the local government (LG) councils also could receive salaries directly through bank accounts without delay from April 1.

Until then, the bench comprising Justice Nadeem Akhtar and Justice Khadim Hussain Tunio ordered, funds for salaries of the employees of the Sindh LG department be kept in an escrow account wherefrom salaries might be disbursed timely. A compliance report be submitted to the court by the chief secretary in 45 days, it added. The order was authored by Justice Tunio.

The bench issued the order on Wednesday it had reserved in the matter of a lower cadre employee BS-7 employee, Ghulam Rasool, and had called Additional CS (LG) Syed Najam Shah. He appeared before the court after it issued his bailable warrants for non-appearance and not submitting any reply. On March 7, Najam tendered unconditional apology and made a representation.

According to his case, Ghulam Rasool was appointed as junior clerk on April 23, 2012 in the LG department. He was first posted in the Union Council (UC) of Chanesar-I, Taluka Nawabshah, where he worked till Sept 15, 2014. He was then transferred to the office of the LG directorate, Shaheed Benazirabad Division, by the LG secretary. There he withdrew salary from UC Chanesar-I under the head of the directorate's budget sanctioned vide order dated Nov 9, 2016. After that he was relieved from UC Chanesar-I.

In order to draw his salary from the directorate, he was required to have an identity (ID) made to get assigned himself a personal number for which he approached the respondents time and again, but the requests remained unattended. He was transferred to the Town Committee Bucheri where he was refused joining by Town Committee Bucheri chairman Mohammad Bachal Zardari, who appointed 71 employees on daily wages.

Then he returned to the Directorate General LG, Shaheed Benazirabad, but reportedly he has not received his salary since Jan 1, 2017. The court received comments from the LG director stating that the petitioner's case was genuine and he repeatedly requested the higher authorities to...