DECISION These three appeals from a common order of the Labour Court No.VI at Hyderabad dismissing the petitions under section 25-A, IRO have arisen in the following circumstances:-- The petitioners are alleged to have been appointed as conductors at Mirpur Khas on different dates. Ali Nawaz was there from 29-7-1981. Kirshinchand from 5-6-1988 and Muhammad Mushtaq from 1-4-1990. All of them had deposited Rs.500 towards security deposits. To begin with Ali Nawaz had deposited Rs.200 but later on probably because of some change brought about, he had to deposit Rs.300 more. Their case is that they had been removed from their services from the some date between 1991 to 1992.
2. The petitions came to be resisted on behalf of the respondent on a number of grounds. The main plank of their contention however was that the petitioners were never in the employment of the respondents but were paid commission for the day their services were availed of as conductors.
3. The petitioners were their own witnesses and Zafarullah Khan, District Manager, Mirpur Khas appeared on behalf of the respondents.
4. The petition came to be dismissed on the ground that the petitioners were not workmen but only casual employees on commission basis.
5. Ali Nawaz in his cross-examination admitted that he was being paid commission only for the day he performed his duty. The statement of the other 2 is not different. There is no documentary evidence to show that any appointment letters were issued to them, or that their names were kept on the roll of the employees of the respondents, though. Loadful of documents had been looked in....The statement of Zafarullah Khan is to the effect that they never worked for more than 19 days at a stretch and never 3 months in a year. He has not been subjected to cross-examination on that score. In this state of the record and evidence it cannot be said that they were workmen within the meaning of the word in the IRO or the Standing Orders Ordinance and they have not been even removed either. As the law stands even an employee on a work-charge basis can be removed from employment verbally after years of being with the employers. It was held in Muhammad Yaqoob v. The Punjab Labour Court No. 1 and 5 others 1990 SCM R 1539 that: "In order to get the benefit of the Standing Orders Ordinance in the matter of termination of service, the petitioner had to show that he was a permanent workman. A `permanent workman' has been defined in the Standing Orders Ordinance by reference to the nature of the work on which he has been engaged or employed. If the work is not of a permanent nature, then howsoever long may be his employment, he cannot be taken to be a permanent workman. The length of the period of employment by itself has not been made the ground or a test for determining the nature of the work."
6. There is no merit in the appeals. I will, there for uphold the impugned order and dismiss the appeal.