PESHAWAR: A Peshawar High Court bench onThursdayissuedastay ordersuspendingthe process to appoint the new chief financial officer to the Khyber Pakhtunkhwa Economic Zones Development and Management Company.

Justice Ikramullah Khan and Justice Lal Jan Khattak issued the order on a petition filed by former CFO of the company Shahid Iqbal Khattak against the termination of his services by the company`s board of directors on Aug 10, 2017.

The bench issued notices to respondents, including the provincialchiefsecretary, chairman of the KPEZDMC board of directors, chief executive officer of the company and others, for respond to the petition and fixed Oct 19 for the next hearing asking respondents to maintain status quo on the matter.

An advertisement was published in newspapers on Sept 24 for the appointment of the KPEZDMC CFO.Qazi Jawad Ehsanullah, lawyer for the petitioner, said his client was a qualified chartered accountant and was appointed the CFO of the KPEZDMC on Aug 13, 2015, after a competitive process.

He added that the KPEZDMC was a public sector company, fully owned and controlled by the KP government.

The lawyer said the petitioner had been performing his functions to the best of his ability and throughout his tenure he had never received any complaint or grievance about his performance at work from any quarter.

He added that the chief executive officer of the company had signed his performance appraisal for the period 2016-17 and declared him outstanding in all departments.

The lawyer said the petitioner was taken aback when his termination letter was issued all of a sudden on Aug 10 proclaiming it was the board of directors, which had in its 13th meeting held the same day decided to terminate his services.

He said the termination letter was issued to him without being given prior show causenotice.

The lawyer said the sudden removal of the petitioner had irked several others in the company and that on Aug 14, the Audit and Risk Management Committee of the company had decided to ask about the reasonsforit.

He claimed that the internal inquiry later revealed that two false and baseless allegations were levelled against the petitioner and declared the termination illegal stating the matter was not on the agenda circulated for the 13th board meeting and that the HR committee of the board didn`t recommend his termination.

The lawyer said the finance and strategy committee of the board, too, didn`t discuss the matter.

He said it was not a simple case in which employment of a contractual employee was dispensed with and instead, it was a case of the breach of fundamental guarantees enshrined in Articles 4, 9, 10-A and 25 of the Constitution.

He asked the court to declare illegal and arbitrary the Aug 10 impugned termination letter for his client.