KARACHI: The ongoing protest by ‘schoolteachers’ who faced police action when they tried to march on the Bilawal House a day ago after a weeklong sit-in has brought to the fore simmering differences between former and present ministers of education — Pir Mazharul Haq and Nisar Ahmad Khuhro.

Mr Khuhro has said that the protesters were among the 13,000 people who were recruited against the 1,425 sanctioned vacancies and thus their recruitment was fake, bogus and in excess of the number of available seats.

He advised them to appear in a written test through National Testing Service (NTS) next month if they wanted to join the education department while his predecessor Pir Mazharul Haq threw his weight behind the agitating ‘teachers’ and said they had been recruited after departmental tests to which he himself was a witness.

Mr Haq appealed to the party high command, Bilawal Bhutto-Zardari and Asif Ali Zardari, to look into the teachers’ issue as it would be injustice to deprive them of their salaries at the pretext of fake recruitment made by some unscrupulous officials. The party needed to take care of the people who had voted it to power, he said in a statement.

He said that he was shocked to see brutal action against teachers including women who were protesting for their rights and asked his party high command to take its notice and give rights to the people.

But Mr Khuhro made it clear to the agitators that all recruitment to the education department would now be made only through NTS tests, therefore, he once again offered to the Teachers Action Committee that all the candidates recruited two years ago in violation of rules should prepare themselves for the NTS test which would be conducted within a month to recruit teachers to the 1,425 approved vacancies.

He said that they should prepare themselves for the test to avail themselves of the opportunity to prove their merit and get the job, otherwise they would miss their chance.

Mr Khuhro told a group of media persons at his chamber in the Sindh Assembly on Friday that he had made several attempts to resolve the issue through talks with the participants of the sit-in but they did not pay any heed to him and instead started moving towards the Bilawal House, which invited police action. The law and order was an administrative issue which had nothing to do with the education department, he said.

Mr Khuhro said the education department had made fake appointments of 13,000 people against 1,425 vacancies. The recruitment was so blatantly bogus that 400 Bengalis and 200 Gilgitis were given jobs as teachers of Sindhi, he said, adding such a stark violation of rules could not be accepted because now the government did not want to repeat past mistakes.

He said the PPP tried to provide jobs but the officials misused their authority by indulging in fake recruitments. The 12 officials involved in the scam were suspended and when the process was initiated to terminate their jobs they moved court and got a stay order while at the same time the protesting candidates also approached the court which had reserved judgment in their case, said Mr Khuhro.

Published in Dawn, September 13th, 2014