The Sindh High Court (SHC) on Wednesday disposed of a constitutional petition of a journalist who had survived a bomb blast on Chehlum last year, and ordered the provincial government to compensate him within four weeks. Jaffar Abbas Jaffri, who works for a newspaper, had filed a petition seeking compensation for his medical bills according to the Sindh government’s announcement.
Jaffri told the division bench, comprising Chief Justice Mushir Alam and Justice Syed Hasan Azhar Rizvi, that he had received serious injuries in the line of duty at the Jinnah Postgraduate Medical Centre, where a second bomb blast had occurred on Chehlum last year. After the twin explosions, the provincial government had announced compensation of Rs 500,000 each for the deceased victims’ families and Rs 100,000 for each survivor.
However, Jaffri said, despite approaching the authorities concerned several times, he is yet to be compensated. He said that he was unable to bear the expenses of his medical treatment, and that he had repeatedly approached the government officials, but no positive response has been received thus far. After the hearing, the court directed the Sindh government to compensate the petitioner within four weeks.
ARREARS: Another SHC division bench, comprising Justices Gulzar Ahmed and Shahid Anwar Bajwa, ordered the provincial government to pay 19 months’ arrears to SHC staffers within two months. The bench issued the directive while disposing of a constitutional petition filed by Abdul Malik and other court staffers seeking their arrears. The petitioners said that in an identical petition filed previously, the court had ordered increasing the salaries of Sindh’s judicial staffers so they are on a par with the salaries of court staffers working in other provinces.
They said that the Punjab government had last year sanctioned special judicial allowance for all judicial officers working in subordinate courts to be equivalent to three times of their original salary, and it was effective from July 2008. They also said that according to the recommendations made in the National Judicial Policy 2009, the National Judicial (Policymaking) Committee had recommended that judicial officers of all provinces should receive the same salaries as those in Punjab.
They added that the court had disposed of an identical petition previously while issuing orders for making their salaries equal to those working in other provinces, but their arrears are yet to be paid.
