The president of the Lucky Cement Factory Workers Union was released from prison on 15 January. He was one of five union leaders who had been arrested in September 2010 and released in November 2010 only to have been arrested again. The judge ruled that the district coordination officer had detained him unlawfully under Section 3 of the Maintenance of Public Order.
In the long-running Pearl Continental case, the provincial Labour Court ordered on 26 February that 20 union members and officers be reinstated, almost nine years after they had been sacked. Two of the union members had been sacked for absenteeism in March 2002 while they were illegally jailed. It was alleged that they had committed criminal acts but in 2009 the cases against them were dismissed. A decision is still pending in the case of 11 other union members dismissed in June 2002.
Three members of the Employees Old Benefit Institution (EOBI) trade union who had been sacked were reinstated on 10 June by court order. They had been fired on charges of maligning the chairman and other senior officials of the EOBI through complaints to senior staff and the media.