' Pir Akhtar Hussain Bodla, learned Presiding Officer, Punjab Labour Court No, 4, Faisalabad, on 17-2- 1993, ordered reinstatement of Munir Ahmad, Muhammad Rafiq and Nazir Ahmad, with full back benefits. The Managing Director of the Jubilee Textile Industries, Abdullahpur, Faisalabad has preferred the present appeal, assailing the soundness of the aforesaid decision.
2. As many as eleven employees, including the aforesaid persons, had on 5-3-1989 filed a grievance petition in the Labour Court at Faisalabad, under section 25-A, Industrial Relations Ordinance, 1969. They were employees of the Industry, although, according to the employer, all these people, except Munir Ahmad, Muhammad Rafiq and Nazir Ahmad, had never served the establishment and as such had no locus standi to approach the Labour Court for enforcing their service rights. As regards the aforementioned three persons, it was asserted by the employer before the Labour Court that they were only temporary employees and had left the service voluntarily on 1-1-1989, since when they had been serving some other industry at Faisalabad. It was added that they were not signatories to the grievance petition. It was contended that the Managing Director of the concern was not actually the employer, he had improperly or unnecessarily been made a party to the proceedings and the proper person had not been impleaded as respondent before the Labour Court. Yet another objection taken up by the respondent before the Labour Court was that the petitioners there had not served any grievance notice upon the employer, without which the grievance petition could not proceed.
3. Muhammad Azam, one of the petitioners in the Labour Court, made his statement (as P.W. 2), and another person, Muhammad Ashraf was also examined as a witness (P.W. 1). Muhammad Ashraf, having been removed from service of the Industry, in question, was treated by the Labour Court to be an interested and inimical and not an independent or a truthful witness, having a background of hostility against the establishment. The learned lower Court, however, considered the statement of Muhammad Azam P.W. 2, besides going through the relevant record, in coming to certain conclusions, which, I do not think, are in any way incorrect or unsound. The relevant register carried the names of Munir Ahmad, Muhammad Rafiq and Nazir Ahmed only, and not the other eight persons, as employees of the Industry. As already said, the respondent before the Labour Court, appellant before this forum, had maintained that these persons also had opted to stage exit from the fold of the establishment, as probably they had got more lucrative jobs elsewhere.
4. Normally, during these difficult times, when unemployment is the order of the day, no person, who has got a job somewhere, would leave it, since he and his family would just starve, the prices of commodities of daily use having rocketed sky-high. In line with the learned Labour- Court, I am not prepared to believe that the abovementioned three persons had abandoned employment, of their own accord. The appellant, as respondent in the lower Court, had not been able to lead any worthwhile evidence to establish the assertion that Munir, Rafiq and Nazir had left the service, without being asked or forced by the establishment to do so. Had they done it voluntarily, there was no earthly reason why they should have afterwards approached the Labour Court and invoked aid of the Labour Laws for re-employment. It has not been possible for the appellant to convince the Court below, on the strength of reliable evidence, that these persons had got employment in some other industry, and they were only exploiting or blackmailing the former establishment and the employer, by dragging them into litigation for furtherance of their nefarious and selfish ends.
5. Admittedly, Rafiq, Munir and Nazir were not intimated, through any order in writing, that their services were no longer required or that they were being ousted from service for any other reason or on a charge of misconduct etc. Against them. Their services were terminated orally and this incidence obviously was violate of the provisions of Standing Order 12(3) of the Standing Orders Ordinance VI of 1968. They were required to be served with show-cause notices and charge-sheets and were also to face regular inquiries, before their services could be dispensed with, which could also not be done without proof of any allegations against them and not just by observance of legal formalities on paper. In so far as the objection about absence of grievance notice, taken up by the employer, is concerned, it stands falsified by the documents Exhs. P-4, 5 and 10, as also the postal receipts Exhs. P-26, 27 and 32. The notices dispatched by registered post were returned on refusal by the addressees, as indicated by Exhs. P-15, 16 and 21. The technical objection about non- maintainability of the grievance petition thus turns out to be having no substance. The grievance petition, as also the power of attorney in the name of Ch. Naimatullah Khan, Advocate, who had drafted and filed ,the petition, carry the signatures of all the employees, and it will not be proper, as also safe, to give credence to the assertion of the employer that the grievance petition had been filed in the Labour Court in an unauthorized manner, as the learned counsel or his clerk had himself affixed the signatures of all of them.
6. The grievance petition, to the extent of Munir Ahmad, Muhammad Rafiq and Nazir Ahmad, had rightly been allowed, and as regards others it had been dismissed on perfectly valid premises. The authorities cited by the learned counsel for the appellant, as 1991 SCMR '2087, 1992 PLC 657 (Karachi High Court) and 1984 PLC 631 (Labour Appellate Tribunal Punjab), in urging that the workmen had themselves stopped coming to the mill and, of their sweet-will had deserted or discontinued service, cannot conveniently be availed of against of the employees, as the establishment has not been able to bring any evidence on record, to the satisfaction of the Court, that they had voluntarily abandoned service. The plea that their services would be deemed to have come to an end, once they had voluntarily discontinued coming to the premises, to perform their duties, cannot be upheld.
7. It has been pronounced in 1991 SCMR 2087 and 1990 PLC 255 (Lahore High Court) that pleading of a fact is one thing and proving the same is a distinct and independent matter and mere oral assertion of a workman about entitlement to back benefits should not be taken as enough, for awarding him the same, and that too in totality. If a petitioner's own statement is silent on the point, he cannot be said to have remained jobless for the disputed period and held entitled to his emoluments, following his reinstatement. Back benefits do not automatically flow from the order of a worker's reinstatement in service. In the instant case, however, an assertion has been made by a witness, Muhammad Azam that the employees all have been without any job, since the time they were removed from the rolls of the establishment. Muhammad Azam has specifically named only one person, Muhammad Rafiq, in that context, and has made a general statement about others. It is true that proof of a fact in the negative is not always possible. The only statement, the aggrieved persons could make, was that they had not gainfully been employed elsewhere. For negation of this statement and for proof of the establishment's claim that these persons had not remained jobless, but had been working for gain throughout, positive evidence could only be produced by the appellant, as respondent before the Labour Court. The evidence on this count required, on both sides, is frankly lacking; but it is certainly an act of cruelty, justifiable from no legal or moral angle, that the employees, one fine morning, were asked to stop coming to their places of duty. They must have been through very hard and ominous times, on having remained jobless for a number of years. I would, therefore, award these three persons half of the back benefits too. They shall immediately be reinstated in service, if already it has not been done. The appeal of the establishment fails and is dismissed with costs, in the terms above.