PUTRAJAYA, March 9 \u2014 The Court of Appeal today set aside a High Court decision that had ordered the government to adjust the pensions of a group of retired civil servants based on a 2016 service circular.<\/p>\n
Justice Datuk Azhahari Kamal Ramli, delivering the unanimous ruling of a three-member bench, said the issue had already been determined in a previous Court of Appeal decision in 2022, according to Free Malaysia Today.<\/p>\n
He said the judicial review filed by Aminah Ahmad and 56 other retired civil servants was therefore res judicata and amounted to an abuse of the court process.<\/p>\n
The bench, chaired by Justice Datuk Lim Chong Fong, also comprised Justice Datuk Meor Hashimi Abdul Hamid.<\/p>\n
Justice Azhahari clarified that the ruling applies only to the 57 respondents involved in the present case.<\/p>\n
The dispute arose after Aminah, a former Foreign Ministry officer, filed the judicial review seeking a court order compelling the government to adjust their pensions using the formula under the Pension Adjustment Act 1980 before amendments were introduced in 2013.<\/p>\n
Under the earlier formula, pension revisions were tied to salary adjustments for serving civil servants.<\/p>\n
In January 2023, the High Court allowed the respondents\u2019 application, prompting the government to file the present appeal. The order was subsequently stayed pending the outcome of the appeal.<\/p>\n
During submissions, the government \u2014 represented by senior federal counsel Ahmad Hanir Hambaly @ Arwi \u2014 argued that retirees were not entitled to pension adjustments based on Service Circular PP 1\/2016 as the circular only enhanced the civil service scheme and did not constitute a salary revision.<\/p>\n
The Court of Appeal agreed with the government\u2019s position, noting that Aminah had also failed to demonstrate that she suffered losses as a result of the 2013 amendments and had not previously appealed the matter.<\/p>\n
Following today\u2019s ruling, the government is no longer required to implement the pension adjustments sought by the respondents.<\/p>\n
Counsel Datuk Baljit Singh Sidhu, who appeared for the respondents together with Gurpreet Kaur Pannu, said he had instructions to seek leave to appeal the decision to the Federal Court.<\/p>\n
Federal counsel Mohammad Sallehuddin Md Ali also appeared for the government.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"PUTRAJAYA, March 9 \u2014 The Court of Appeal today set aside a High Court decision that had ordered…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":519111,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[39],"tags":[232316,28,232315,234522,234520,234521,147,530,44998],"class_list":["post-519110","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-personal-finance","tag-aminah-ahmad","tag-business","tag-civil-servants","tag-court-decision","tag-court-of-appeal","tag-datuk-lim-chong-fong","tag-personal-finance","tag-personalfinance","tag-the-government"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/519110","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=519110"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/519110\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/519111"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=519110"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=519110"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=519110"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}