No labour here! Skeletal staff takes a toll on functioning of labour courts
HYDERABAD: Running to a labour court against an illegal retrenchment can wear you out, let alone guaranteeing a redressal.
As with any other court litigations, the ‘six months’ provision in disposing of a labour litigation is increasingly becoming a tough task for the officials to dispose of cases as judges have not been appointed yet. Amid the Supreme Court pointing out that vacancies in the lower court are “unacceptable”, the three labour courts in the city have not even a single full-time presiding officer.
Not just this, two of the three industrial tribunals has no presiding officer and only one officer hears arguments when it comes to industrial disputes.
With skeletal staff and minimum machinery, the labour courts functioning is not up to the provisions of the Industrial Disputes Act, 1947, point out staff and advocates, alike.
This is at a time when pendency of about 1,300 cases in both the labour court and industrial tribunals are awaited to be disposed of, some for several years now.
“There has been a judge of district judge cadre, recently appointed to industrial tribune 1 and the officer has been given a full additional charge for the other two tribunals. But, one can imagine what a single person can do when too much work is given,” said an official while referring to the slow progress of cases being dispersed. The labour courts, at a much critical state, has an officer from State VAT appellate visiting the labour courts, in the absence of full-time presiding officers.
“There is a bad impression that is there among the people about labour courts. And, it is the lack of a judge,” said T Srinivas, superintendent of a labour court.
“The yearly 100 - 150 cases that are filed are taking a lot of time to be resolved,” he added. Meanwhile, another officer stares at a bleak future when he expects, “the situation to get better in March when the High Court would appoint a full-time presiding officer.”
Surprisingly, the computerisation of resolved cases is still pending in the labour related courts. It is learnt that the availability of pronounced judgment orders in labour courts are not uploaded on ‘e-courts’. The reason, officials said, is lack of enough computer systems.
Interestingly, a lot of pending labour cases in the courts are relating to TSRTC and APSRTC employment disputes.