PESHAWAR, Sept 25: The All Fata Lecturers Association has demanded of the federal and NWFP governments to regularise their jobs and formulate a permanent service structure for them.

They said they would go on an indefinite strike if their demands were not met.

Speaking at a press conference at the Peshawar Press Club here on Tuesday, Ashfaq Ahmed, a spokesman for the Afla, said more than 650 male and female lectures were discharging their duties in 40 colleges since their recruitment by the Fata Education Directorate, but they had been denied the facilities enjoyed by most other government servants.

He said the Fata directorate had hired their services on a contact basis on July 28, 2003, for a period of three years on a fixed pay of Rs8,000 per month. And, despite increase in salaries of other employees, the directorate had not increased their wages.

He said the Afla members had been badly affected by price hike, like the other regular Fata employees, but unlike most of them their wages had not been increased since 2003.

He said the Fata directorate had recruited them on the criterion set by the Provincial Public Service Commission, but it was not ready to provide them with facilities being offered to the other lecturers selected by the PPSC.

He said the Fata lecturers were performing their duties in conflict zones, where even security personnel faced threats, but their services were not permanent.

Mr Ahmed said if a lecturer left a college after his selection by the PPSC, the Fata education directorate did not fill his/her vacant seat and because of this attitude of the directorate, the main sufferers were students.

He said the Fata lecturers had been posted in far-flung areas, where they had no residential facilities and were constrained to live in extremely poor conditions, but the directorate was not ready to provide them any extra allowance, relief or other facility.

At present, he said, Fata had 32 colleges for boys, including eight vocational institutes, and 15 girls colleges across seven tribal agencies. He said they had formally sent their demands to the governor, but had received no response as yet.

They said they had been left with no choice but to brief the press about the miseries and hardships they were confronted with. He said they were experiencing the worst kind of economic exploitation at the hands of the government.

“Social injustice gives birth to intolerance, but the lecturers have yet not demonstrated any kind of anger.” He asked the government to resolve their problems on humanitarian grounds as soon as possible.