Judicial academies: HCs, provincial governments asked to raise salaries

The Chief Justice of Pakistan, Justice Iftikhar Mohammed Chaudhry, has asked the high courts and provincial governments to consider the demand to increase the pay package and allowances of provincial judicial academies.
"I am confident that the Chief Justices of the High Courts will take up the matter with the respective governments at the earliest," he said while addressing the concluding plenary session of the first day of the "First Summit of All Pakistan Judicial Academies" here on Saturday.
Referring to the performance of the judicial academies and staff of the High Court of Sindh, organisers of the Summit who also managed training of all the judicial officers, he said that keeping the importance in nature of their duty their salary package needs a reasonable increase. "Staff of judicial academies be brought at par with the staff of the Federal Judicial Academy to remove the discrimination," he observed.
The Chief Justice further pointed out that the Prime Minister had also increased the salary structure of the Federal Judicial Academy at par with the Supreme Court of Pakistan. Similarly, staff members of Pakistan Law Commission are also getting salaries equal to staff members of the Supreme Court of Pakistan, he added.
He was hopeful that the day-long deliberations and suggestions, which come out from the Summit, would be considered by all judicial academies. Later, the Chief Justice gave away certificates to all participants of the Summit who presented their papers and attended working sessions. The Chief Justices of all the provincial High Courts, Judges of the Sindh High Court and representatives of bar associations and law students also attended the Summit.