RAWALPINDI, Oct 10: The district nazim of Attock, Tahir Sadiq Khan, informed the Lahore High Court’s Rawalpindi bench on Friday that the Punjab government had stopped funding district governments and taken back the administrative control of colleges two years ago.

The nazim stated this in reply to a petition filed by a female lecturer of Government Girls Inter College Jand, seeking payment of her salary and permission to perform her duty.

The nazim, one of the respondents, said when in 2001 the colleges were handed over to the district government under the devaluation plan there were shortage of 150 lectures and the local government inducted lecturers on contract bases till the posts were filled through the Punjab Public Service Commission. He said the posts had not yet been filled by the commission and the contractual teachers were still working against these vacancies.

Justice Chaudhry Zafar Iqbal took strong exception to the absence of district officer (colleges) Attock in the court and asked an official of the education department, who appeared on his behalf, why the petitioner Shazia Naureen had not been paid her salary since January and was being marked absent despite the fact that she regularly attended the office.

When the official could not satisfy the court, Justice Iqbal issued directive to the district officer colleges to explain the matter to the court on October 14.

The petitioner maintained that she was appointed as an honorary lecturer of health and physical education in August 2006 after due process of test and interview. Her contract is valid till the post was filled by a regular appointment.

The petitioner said she had neither been paid salary for the last nine months nor was being allowed to mark her attendance by the principal in a bid to force her to leave the job.

The court had earlier issued contempt of court notices to the respondents for not filing their comments despite repeated summons. The principal and the district nazim have now filed their replies while the DO colleges has yet to appear in the court.

Meanwhile, Justice Syed Hamid Ali Shah of the LHC directed the city police officer, DSP and SHO Saddar Berooni not to harass four petitioners by raiding their houses and calling them to police stations.

Saeed Yousaf Khan, the counsel for petitioners Khalid, Shams, Shahid and Tahir, told Dawn that the two other brothers of his clients - Akmal and Zahid - charged with killing two persons had gone underground. He said after failing to arrest the accused, the police had started raiding the houses of the four brothers, pressuring them to produce the alleged killers.