1. ' Preliminary heard. Punjab Labour Court No,3, Lahore, at Ferozewala, by an order tendered on 2-10- 1999 returned, for want of jurisdiction, the grievance petition, filed under section 25-A, Industrial Relations Ordinance, 1969, by one Dr. Akhlaq Ahmad; and he has come up in appeal to this forum.
2. ' Dr. Akhlaq Ahmad has remained employed for some time as Medical Officer in the Khrushid Welfare Clinic, Jia Musa, Shandara, Lahore. The dispensary having been closed, he was relieved of his duty on 6-4-1999. He was in service there from 1-1-1989 to 6-4-1999, and his monthly salary was Rs,6,252. Besides that, he was being paid House Rent Allowance and Utility Allowance. Appointment letter was issued on 1-1-989 and the consolidated salary initially was Rs,3,500, without prior notice, according to the appellant, although he was required to be given one month's notice, else one month's emoluments in lieu thereof. He also laid claim to leave. Encashment gratuity, bonus and other sums, on different counts. On 11-6-1999 he served grievance notice on the Director, Diamond Polimer (Pvt.) Limited, the establishment he was serving. Then he preferred the grievance petition, which was returned on 2-10-1999, as already said.
3. ' Surprisingly he claims to be a workman and is desirous of invoking in his favour the aid of the labour laws, by having access to a labour forum. I am indeed amazed at the manner in which he has sought to be treated as a workman, his counsel arguing that he had been doing manual work, the details of which he has narrated as under: ' He has been keeping medicines on a shelf or in a dispensary, and treating the petients by not only paying mental attention, but by undertaking manual labour as well, since he has also been administering injections and feeling pulse of every patient, besides groping almost all parts of the bodies. He has also been marking his own attendance and that of his subordinates and associates, serving in the Clinic. He has also been issuing prescription slips. Well, if such sundry and trivial movements, if these petty jobs, are enough to render a person a workman, the Head of the State and the Head of the Government cannot escape the ambit and expanse of the definition of 'workman'. It is a matter of general observation and experience that if a man or a woman is physically normal, is blessed with hands, arms and legs, functioning alright, he or she is supposed to utilize them in taking meals, eatable, fluid, water, etc. In wearing and unwearing dresses in fastening and unfastening shoes and socks, in undergoing the whole process of taking bath, in having ablution for offering prayers. It has been pronounced in a number of reported rulings, and it is also a matter of common sense, that it is the primary or prominent, principal or pre-dominant part of work, which will matter, and not just casual or accidental, incidental or ancillary, subsidiary or subservient act of activity, which would make it truly manual and convert an instance of physical labour into labourer-like performance of duty. By no stretch of imagination, could a qualified doctor, like Dr. Khaliq Ahmed who is M.B.,B.S., plead or claim to be a worker, entitled to seek privileges and protections of a work under the Labour Laws.
4. ' Learned counsel has not at all been able to impress me by the arguments he has preliminarily advanced, and convice me about the appellant's 'menial status'. The appeal is wholly without force and is hereby dismissed in limine.