KARACHI: The Sindh High Court (SHC) has delivered a landmark judgment, ruling that services rendered on a daily wage or temporary basis must be counted toward pension benefits upon a worker’s regularization.
The Court’s Verdict
A two-member bench, headed by Justice Adnan-ul-Karim Memon, set aside the administrative orders of the Civil Aviation Authority (CAA) that had previously excluded temporary service periods from pension calculations. The court has directed the CAA to recalculate pension benefits based on the employees’ entire length of service and clear all outstanding dues to the petitioners within two months.
Case Background
The petitioners started their careers with the CAA between 1998 and 2001 as daily wagers and were eventually regularized in 2009. However, upon retirement, the authority refused to include their initial years of service in their pension bracket. The petitioners’ counsel argued that superior courts have already established that once an employee is made permanent, their previous service must be counted for retirement benefits.
CAA’s Defense
The CAA’s legal representative argued that the employees were initially hired through “third-party contracts” and, therefore, were ineligible for pension for that period. The counsel further claimed that the employees had accepted the terms of their permanent appointment, which excluded their previous service.
The Court’s Observation
The SHC rejected the CAA’s stance, emphasizing that pension is a fundamental right and administrative conditions cannot be used to strip employees of their legal rights. According to CAA’s own rules, if temporary service leads to permanent appointment without a break, that period is pensionable. The bench declared that ignoring the previous years of service was illegal and ordered an immediate recalculation of dues.
