November 14, 2008	Friday	Ziqa'ad 15, 1429

KARACHI, Nov 13: The Sindh education department has initiated an exercise to post teachers strictly in accordance with the approved SNE (sanctioned new establishment) of each government college, it has been reliably learnt.

The exercise was initiated on the directives of director-general of colleges Professor Rafiq Ahmed Siddiqui following a number of principals of the city government colleges attributed the poor performance of their students in Class XII exams to the shortage of teachers and their posting in violation of the approved SNEs. Such a disclosure on their part came to light when the Board of Intermediate Education, Karachi, asked 89 government and private colleges whose results in the examinations had remained below 10 per cent to explain reasons behind such a poor performance.

Sources said Sindh Minister for Education Pir Mazhar-ul-Haq taking a serious note of the poor performance of the colleges and the causes cited directed the DG colleges to ensure that teachers be posted in accordance with the approved SNEs.

Voicing concern over the lingering issue of teachers’ shortage in government colleges, the Sindh Lecturers and Professors Association has suggested to the education department to allow principals to hire the services of cooperative teachers to overcome the shortage at the earliest.

Prof Ather Hussain Mirza, the SPLA’s city chapter president, said it would take a long time to overcome the shortage of 2,000 teachers. He suggested that principals be allowed to hire the services of cooperative teachers on a monthly stipend of Rs5,000 so that students might not suffer for long.

Recalling that the practice of hiring teachers on a cooperative basis was in vogue when the government intermediate colleges were under the umbrella of the city district government and salaries to the cooperative teachers used to be disbursed from the discretionary funds of both the former and the incumbent city nazims, he suggested that the education department might place a certain amount at the disposal of college principals from the Rs12 million fund generated through the sale of prospectus of the centralized admission policy so that they could pay salaries to cooperative teachers.

Referring to education department’s recent advertisement whereby it had invited applications for filling 650 vacant posts of college teachers, Prof Mirza said that if the education department was sincere about overcome teachers’ shortage the Sindh Public Service Commission be immediately asked to expedite the process of conducting tests and interviews of the applicants. No more time should be wasted in posting the 650 lecturers whose appointments had been recommended by the SPSC a long time ago, he said.