Islamabad - The federal ombudsperson against harassment has imposed a fine of Rs 100,000 each on chief scientific officer and former chairman of Pakistan Science Foundation (PSF) for creating intimidating, hostile and offensive work environment for their female subordinate official.
The Ombudsman directed the PSF to recover the amount from Dr Hafeezullah Khan, Chief Scientific Officer, and Dr Khalid Ahmad, former acting chairman of PSF, as compensation payable to the complainant. It further directed to submit the compliance report to the office within 15 days of receipt of the judgement.
Syeda Rehana Batool, BPS-18 officer at Pakistan Science Foundation which works under the ministry of science and technology, had complained that she was harassed and victimised through different tactics for allegedly leaking out information to a newspaper about the malpractices in the foundation. An illegal inquiry regarding a news item published in a paper was conducted against her; however, office order was not issued regarding inquiry committee and charges.
On March 13, 2014 she was transferred as senior scientific officer in research support section illegally and even was not properly relieved from science popularisation section. And, according to her, her computer scanner was stolen and data from computer was deleted to mentally torture her. Subsequently, she was dismissed from service on October 3, 2014 and her salary was stopped.
In its judgement issued on Tuesday, Federal Ombudsperson Justice (Retd) Yasmin Abbasi stated, “There is sufficient material on record which proves that off and on scenes were created against the complainant to put her under constraint harassment either by transferring her from one section to another without supported evidence to justify transfer. It is proved that hostile, intimidating and offensive work environment was created against the complainant and without assigning any reason she was removed from service even without calling her explanation on vague statement that she has been found guilty of various acts of omission and commission amounting to misconduct.”
The fine was imposed on Dr Hafeez for creating hostile workplace and on Dr Khalid for not doing anything to stop this, being a responsible authority.  The former acting chairman despite knowing that Rehana Batool had filed a complaint against Dr Hafeez appointed him as head inquiry to probe her case.
Lawyer of Rehana Batool, Advocate Nargis Chohan, appreciating the decision of the ombudsperson and appealed to the newly appointed chairman of PSF Dr Mohammad Ashraf to implement the decision and reinstate the complainant on her post. Her salary stopped for the last five months must also be released, she added. She also requested to President Mamnoon Hussain to uphold Ombudsperson’s decisions in harassment cases and reject all the appeals in such cases landing in the presidency.