Justice Amarjeet Singh, who made the order last month, adjourned the application to March 4 to consider the contents of additional affidavits filed by both parties.
Senior federal counsel Ahmad Hanir Hambaly appeared for the government while lawyer Baljit Singh Sidhu acted for the 56 litigants.
In an affidavit filed last Friday, the government admitted it had the financial capability to pay the estimated RM1.7 billion due in pension adjustments in accordance with the court order.
However, director-general of public service Wan Ahmad Dahlan Abdul Aziz said public funds had already been earmarked for development, pension payment, investment and savings previously.
“These public funds must be managed well and we must adhere to the finance ministry’s advice so as not to affect the nation’s interests,” he said.
Wan Ahmad denied the ballpark figure of RM1.7 billion which he cited in a previous affidavit was designed to cast fear on the court or any party, he added.
“The amount stated is an estimated sum based on available data, but needs to be cross-checked. It was stated with genuine intentions,” he said.
He also insisted that the government has never taken the position that it could not pay the adjusted pensions.
“As such, no one should speculate anything based on what is available in the public record,” he said in the court filing made last Friday.
In a previous affidavit filed earlier this month, Wan Ahmad said the order would not just affect the 56 litigants but 531,976 pensioners or their dependents.
He was replying to an affidavit filed by Aminah Ahmad on behalf of 56 former civil servants who oppose the government’s application to stay the Jan 16 court order.
Aminah had in a previous affidavit claimed that the government had raised the RM1.7 billion sum as “a spectre only” to cast fear on the court.
“However, it was not accompanied by any computation,” she added.
She also said that based on available public records, pension fund KWAP had RM150.1 billion as of 2022, and that the sum has continued to grow.
In a further affidavit filed today to rebut Wan Ahmad’s assertions, Aminah said Putrajaya’s allocation of funds by the government under its budget does not absolve the government from its legal duty to compute and pay the pension arrears.
“Any shortfall in budget planning is an internal matter within the purview of the government and should not prejudice the rights of pensioners,” she said when calling for the stay application to be dismissed.
On Jan 23, the government filed its notice of appeal, seeking to reverse the High Court’s order.
Prior to 2013, a retiree’s pension was to be revised based on the prevailing salary of civil servants serving in the same grade.
However, amendments to the law made in 2013 introduced a flat-rate annual increment rate of 2% for pensioners.
In a previous lawsuit, Aminah and her fellow retired civil servants sought a court order declaring amendments to Sections 3 and 6 of the Pensions Adjustment Act 1980 (PAA) unconstitutional.
They asked that their pensions be computed in accordance with the law as it stood before the 2013 amendments were made.
The retired civil servants initially lost the suit in the High Court in 2020.
However, in 2022, the Court of Appeal overturned that decision, ruling that the amendments to the PAA in 2013 were null and void as they had put the applicants in a less favourable position than previously, in breach of Article 147 of the Federal Constitution.
On June 27, 2023, a five-member Federal Court bench upheld the Court of Appeal’s decision.