FAKHRUDDIN G. EBRAHIM, J.-On 9-12-1970, the respondent, Engraving Master in the petitioner- Company filed an application under section 34 of the Industrial Relations Ordinance, 1969 in which he complained that on 3-11-1970, the General Manager of the petitioner-Company called him and asked him to leave service on payment of earned wages only. The respondent declined to do so without a termination letter in writing and payment of his legal dues. He was, thereafter not allowed to work and directed to report to the cashier who when approached asked the respondent to draw Rs. 450 only, as his services were no longer required. The respondent declined to accept this amount in full and final settlement of his rightful claims due to him on termination of service, upon which he was asked to leave the Mills. The prayer in the application was for re-instatement in service or, in the alternative an. Order for payment of the respondent's legal dues. The Company in reply raised preliminary objection as to the maintainability of the application under section 34 of the Industrial Relations Ordinance and also alleged that the respondent was not a workman within the meaning of the I: R. O, Their case was that the respondent approached the General Manager of the petitioner with a request that he be relieved from service without giving one month's notice or payment of one month's pay in lieu thereof which request was acceded to by the General Manager and the respondent thereafter left the service of his own accord. The Labour Court allowed the application and ordered re-instatement of the respondent with full back benefits. An appeal filed by the petitioner against this decision was dismissed by the Labour Appellate Tribunal on the ground that it was barred by time. We may at the outset point out that having examined the record and the proceedings before the Labour Court, our conclusion is that the Appellate Tribunal was justified in dismissing the appeal as being barred by time.
2. Faced with this situation Mr. Hassan A. Shaikh, the learned counsel for the petitioner raised a more fund a mental contention of want of jurisdiction on the part of the Labour Court to entertain the application under section 34 of the Industrial Relations Ordinance. The argument was that the grievance of the petitioner related to the alleged failure of the petitioner to act in accordance with the provisions contained in the Schedule to the Standing Orders Ordinance, more particularly, Standing Order 12 and therefore, the remedy available to the respondent was to move an application for redress of his grievance under the then Standing Order 18 and not by an application under section 34 of the I. R. O. It was further argued that the respondent had also to prove that he had complied with the pre-requisites for an application under Standing Order 18 and that he was a workman within the meaning of the expression as defined in the Standing Orders Ordinance.
3. Mr. Munawwar Malik, the learned counsel for the respondent in reply stated that the respondent had the option, at the relevant time, either to adopt the grievance procedure under the then Standing Order 18 or to make an application under section 34 of the Industrial Relations Ordinance.
In other words, according to him, the workman was not obliged to move an application under Standing Order 18.
4. For reasons appearing hereinafter we are of the view that if the grievance of the respondent was, as in this case, in relation to a right guaranteed to him under the Standing Orders Ordinance, his remedy was to have recourse to the then Standing Order' 18 and it was not open to him fall back upon section 34 of the 1. R. O. If the argument of Mr. Munawwar Malik is accepted the result will be that section 34 will impliedly repeal or make irrelevant and redundant Standing Order 18, for then it would be open to a workman to choose either remedy, and the result will be that he will be permitted to successfully avoid the detailed grievance procedure, provided in Standing Order 18 which procedure also protects, in some measure, the interests of the employer. The well-settled rule of interpre--tation is that Court will avoid reading an Act of Parliament in a manner the effect of which is to make nugatory another enactment unless they are totally irreconcilable when it will be driven to hold that latter in point of time impliedly repeals the earlier one. The apparent conflict between two statutes may also be resolved by application of the rule generalia specialibus non derogant. In other words; "Where there are general words in a later Act which are capable of reasonable and sensible application without extending them to the subject specially dealt with by earlier Legislation, you are not to hold that earlier a special Legislation indirectly repealed, altered or derro--gated from merely by force of such general words, without any indication of particular intention to do so."
The earlier Standing Orders Ordinance is a special law with a limited objective, while the I. R. O. Is a law of a more general application. The scope of the former is limited while the latter is more extensive. The Standing scope Orders guarantee the minimum terms and conditions of service in Industrial and Commercial establishments to which it applies. The Industrial Relations Ordinance on the other band not only consolidates the law, relating to formation of Trade Unions but also regulates the relations between employers and workmen and provides for avoidance and settlement of any differences or disputes arising between them and matters connected there pith or ancillary thereto. The grievance procedure under Standing Order 18 is available to an individual who has a grievance in respect of any matter under the Standing Orders Ordinance. If, therefore, the complaint is that the workman has been deprived of his benefits accruing to him under Standing Orders Ordinance the workman can after the prescribed mandatory pre-requisites, move the Labour Court under Standing Order 18 for seeking redress therefor. As against this a workman was at the relevant time given the liberty to move an application under section 34 of the Industrial Relations Ordinance for enforcement of any rights guaranteed or secured to him by or under any law for the time being in force or an award or a settlement, without comply--ing any pre- requisites. No doubt the language of section 34 is wide enough to include a grievance that a workman may have in relation to a right guaranteed to him under the Standing Orders but this wide language will not affect the special provisions contained .In Standing Order 18 in the absence of any indication of particular intention to do so. The Industrial Relations Ordinance does not indicate the intention that the grievance procedure under Standing Order 18 will become irrelevant by reason of provisions made in its section 34. The subsequent history of the Legislation also lends support to this view. The Standing Order 18 was omitted by Ordinance IX of 1972 dated 13-4-1972 and by the same Ordinance, section 25-A was added to the Industrial Relations Ordinance which provided a grievance procedure for an individual workman who had been denied any right guaranteed or secured to him by or under any law or any award of settlement. The grievance must firstly be brought to the notice of the employer within three months of the day on which the. Cause of such grievance arises, on which the employer must communicate his decision within fifteen days and if no reply is received or the workman is dissatisfied with the decision, he must move the Labour Court within two months from the date of the communication of the employer or the date of his failure to reply. By Act V of 1972, dated 9.9-1972 Standing Order 12 which provides for termination of employment, was amended providing that a workman aggrieved by his removal from service may "bring his grievance to the notice of the employer in the manner laid down", under section 25-A of the I. R. O., and thereupon the provisions of the said section will apply as they apply to the redress of an individual grievance. By Act XXIII of 1973, dated 9-2-1973, the words 'bring his grievance to the notice of his employer in the manner laid down' were substituted by "take action in accordance with the provisions of (?) On 9-2-1973, the Legislature by Act XXIX of 1973 omitted the words "or workmen" from section 34 of the I. R, O., with the result that a workman had under section 34 no right to move an application for redress of his grievance based on any right guaranteed to him by or under any law. It is obvious tome that this deletion became necessary as earlier Standing Order 1-8 was omitted and section 25-A added to the I. R. O., for otherwise anomaly would be that a workman could successfully avoid the grievance procedure of sec-- petition 25-A thus making the section meaningless. This deletion should have in fact been made when section 25-A was added but the Legislature appears to have been unconscious of retaining section 34 in its unamended form until 9-2-1973. It may further be noticed that in relation to a workman's grievance regarding termination of his service, notwithstanding the retention of section 34 in its original form until 9-2-73, his recourse was under section 25-A only, by reason of amendment made to Standing Order 12 by Act V of 1972. Law as it now stands is, therefore clear, namely, that an individual workman can proceed against his employer before a Labour Court only under section 25-A of the Industrial Relations Ordinance.
5. Before we part we must in fairness to Mr. Munawwar Malik refer to some of the decisions he relied upon in support of his contention that the workman, had at the relevant time option to either move an application under Standing Order 18 or section 34 of the Industrial Relations Ordinance.
6. Firstly, the learned counsel relied on the following observations by a Division Bench of this Court in the case of International Laboratory Employees' Unions v. Sind Labour Appellate Tribunal (PLD 1976 Kar. 292) :--- "Two remedies are provided by the statute for re-instatement-one is by way of individual grievance under subsection (6) of section 25-A and the other by way of industrial dispute under section 34."
The aforesaid observations do not help the learned counsel for they must be understood in the context in which it appears. In this case section 34 application was made by a Collective Bargaining Agent with regard to the dismissal from service of an employee and the argument that was repelled was that an application would lie only under section 25-A of the I. R. O. It may be noticed that in so far as section 25-A is concerned. It provides for redress by an individual workman while under section 34 a Collective Bargain--ing Agent is entitled to raise an industrial dispute in relation to such dismissal. It is in this context that the aforesaid observation should be understood.
7. The next decision is Beach Luxury Hotel Ltd. v. First Sind Labour Court, Karachi (PLD 1976 Kar. 787) and the observation of the learned Single Judge on which the learned counsel relied upon is as follows:- "In March 1972, the word 'workman' had not been deleted from sec--petition 34. It was deleted only from 10th November 1972. Even Standing Order 12 of the Standing Orders Ordinance, which deals with the termination of employment, was also amended from 15th November 1972 so as to make it incumbent on a workman, aggrieved by the termination of his services, to file an application under section 25-A of the said Ordinance. It will, therefore, appear that the respondent had the option to seek the redress of their grievance both under Standing Order 18 of the West Pakistan Industrial and Commer--cial Employment (Standing Orders) Ordinance, 1968, and also under section 34 of the Industrial Relations Ordinance, and they choose the latter."
8. Before the learned Single Judge it was not argued by reference to rules of interpretation of statutes, referred to above, that parallel remedy under section 34 and Standing Order 18 would make the latter redundant. Moreover, the judgment also proceeds on the assumption that the application though under section 34, had complied with the pre-requisites of Standing Order 18. In this view of the matter it was immaterial that the application was made under section ?4 for it could as well have been disposed of as one under Standing Order 18.
9. The other cases on which the learned counsel relied are the decisions of the Labour Appellate Tribunal, Sind. The first is the Brooke Bond (Pakistan) Ltd. And others v. Mahabat Khan (1975 PLC 156), which apart from the fact that we are unimpressed by its reasoning, dealt with section 34 as it stood prior to 9-2-1973 in relation to section 25-A of the I. R. O. And the view expressed was that the workman had remedy under both the sections.
10. The other case of the Labour Appellate Tribunal referred to is the case of Muhammad Husain v.
United Distributors Ltd. (1976 PLC 169) which also related to competency of an application under section 34 by a workman in the presence of section 25-A, and the conclusion was that both the remedies were open to the workman.
11. Lastly, Mr. Munawwar Malik contended that the respondent's application under section 34 could have been treated by the Labour Court as an application under Standing Order 18 and disposed of accordingly for, according to him, the respondent had complied with all the pre-requisites of that Standing Order and furthermore he was a workman within the meaning of the definition as defined in the Standing Orders Ordinance. We have no doubt that mere mentioning of a wrong section will not non-suit a party if the application is otherwise maintainable. Mr. Hassan, A. Sheikh, the learned counsel for the petitioner conceded that it was open to the Labour Court to entertain the respondent's application as one under Standing Order 18. It is, therefore, proper that the respondent should have an opportunity of having his grievance redressed under Standing Order 18.
12. We will, therefore, set aside the two impugned orders and remand the case back to the Labour Court for disposal of the respondent's application under section 34 of the Industrial Relations Ordinance as one under the Standing Order 18. Petition is, therefore, disposed of in these terms with no order as to costs. revisions by the competent authorities. Therefore, it is advisable to consult the official sources or legal professionals for the most up-to-date and accurate information.