October 06, 2008	Monday	Shawwal 06, 1429

RAWALPINDI, Oct 5: On the occasion of World Teachers’ Day on Sunday, college teachers complained of unavailability of facilities and benefits promised to them by the previous government the same day last year, and urged the present rulers to provide the long due benefits.

Punjab Professors and Lecturers Association (PPLA) Rawalpindi chapter, in a press release, stated that the PPP-led government should take immediate steps to end the restlessness among the teachers.

The representative body of the teachers’ community asked the government to announce some benefits on the internationally observed event, as they had pinned all hopes on the democratic government. Talking to Dawn, PPLA president Mohammad Ilyas Qureshi said they (the PML-Q leaders) promised that all teachers would be promoted to the next grade, but the benefit went only to university and school teachers and the college teachers were excluded.

He said the then additional secretary Academics Punjab claimed that a time scale had been prepared by the provincial government about the promotions.

According to the plan, every lecturer has to be promoted to the basic pay scale (BPS) 18 after eight years of service in BPS 17 and into the next scale after eight more years.

“There are teachers who have been serving in the same scale for the last more than 20 years and the government should consider them for the promotions,” Mr Qureshi said.

The PPLA president said they were also promised one extra pay every year with 10 per cent increase in the basic salary. The previous government also pledged some benefits for the children of the teachers but all had went up in smoke, he added.

Meanwhile, the Punjab Teachers Union (PTU) Rawalpindi chapter in its press release bemoaned the political interference in the transfers of the school teachers in the district, further affecting working and performance of the already stressed teachers.

The union said the government had done nothing good for the teachers and had focused on the transfers to victimise political rivals.

PTU President Chaudhry Saghir Alam said the government had not done away with the contract system despite the assurances that no contract teachers would be inducted in future and instead announced to induct thousands of school teachers on contract in Punjab.

He said the governments of NWFP and Balochistan had abolished the contract-based appointments and the Punjab government should follow the suit.

Mr Alam alleged that the property of government schools worth millions of rupees in Rawalpindi was being encroached upon by land grabbers in connivance with some elected people.

APP ADDS: Different public and private organisations arranged a number of activities to pay tributes to the teachers’ community for their services towards nation building.

Seminars and functions were also arranged by civil society organisations to commend the role of teachers in helping the country prosper.

The theme for day this year was “Teachers Matter”.

According to the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organisation (Unesco), the shortage of qualified teachers remains a crucial problem, and it is estimated that 18 million more teachers are needed to reach the goal of universal primary education (UPE) by 2015.

New policies must be devised to eliminate all these hindrances and prepare teachers to impart quality education to the coming generations.

Unesco said the World Teachers’ Day represented the appreciation of the vital contribution that teachers made to education and development.