ISLAMABAD: The Supreme Court of Pakistan has ruled that employees of the Punjab Emergency Service (Rescue 1122) are not civil servants, and therefore the Punjab Service Tribunal does not have jurisdiction over disputes related to their service matters.
Justice Ayesha A. Malik, who authored the judgement, held that proceedings initiated before the tribunal in such matters lack lawful basis because Rescue 1122 employees fall outside the civil service framework.
In a 12-pages judgement issued here, a two-member bench comprising Justice Ayesha A. Malik and Justice Shakeel Ahmad allowed a petition filed by the Punjab government against an order of the Punjab Service Tribunal. The tribunal had earlier partially allowed an appeal by a Rescue 1122 driver, setting aside disciplinary action against him and directing authorities to conduct a fresh inquiry.
The provincial government challenged the ruling, arguing that Rescue 1122 employees are not civil servants but public servants working under an independent statutory body established through the Punjab Emergency Service Act, 2006. According to the government, their appointments and disciplinary matters are governed by separate service rules rather than the Punjab Civil Servants Act, 1974.
In the written judgement, Justice Ayesha A. Malik examined the legal status of the emergency service following amendments introduced in 2021, which changed the organisation’s structure from a body corporate to an independent administrative department of the provincial government. The court observed that despite this structural change, the statutory framework governing the service and its employees remained intact.
The court noted that the employees of the emergency service are declared “public servants” under the law, but their terms and conditions are regulated through separate rules and regulations specific to the service. Since they are not governed by the provincial civil service framework, they cannot be treated as civil servants for the purposes of approaching the service tribunal.
Consequently, the Supreme Court converted the civil petition into an appeal and allowed it, setting aside the tribunal’s June 7, 2023 order. The ruling clarifies that disputes involving Rescue 1122 employees cannot be adjudicated by the Punjab Service Tribunal because it has jurisdiction only over civil servants.
