LAHORE: Tanzeem-i-Asatiza Pakistan, a teachers’ body decided on Sunday to join the Muttahida Mahaz Asatiza Punjab’s “Taleem Bachao” drive.

Teachers belonging to the both bodies from all over the province would gather outside Masjid-i-Shuhada in Lahore on May 8 to march up to the Chief Minister’s House and stage a sit-in there, said Tanzeem’s provincial president Prof Shafiq Ahmad after a meeting of the body’s executive committee here.

Except for Tanzeem’s provincial secretary Muhammad Asghar, all divisional representatives and the executive committee members attended the meeting which unanimously declared the Mahaz’s charter of demands “just and real”.

The meeting also agreed with most of the demands made in a letter written by Mahaz chairman Tariq Mahmood to Punjab Chief Minister Shahbaz Sharif, said Prof Ahmed.

“Education has never been on the priority list of the successive governments and the bureaucracy continues conducting experiments in the sector on the basis of policies framed by it at the behest of alien experts who are quiet unaware of ground realities in Pakistan. When these policies fail, only teachers and their bodies are held responsible,” he said.

Mahaz central secretary general Kashif Shahzad said the chief minister had over a year ago approved a summary to regularise the services of contract-based teachers and a notification was also issued in this regard that was never implemented.

He said some 3,000 posts of teachers from BS-17 to BS-20 had been lying vacant for the last one-and-a-half years in the province. But, the education departments high-ups were not holding the meeting to consider and decide the over-due promotion cases of teachers, he added.

“Posts of headmasters in some 1,300 schools are also lying vacant while implementation on the pay and promotion package for another 13,000 teachers is also being delayed.

“These circumstances have created unrest among the teachers community and they are now left with no option but to protest on roads,” he said and regretted that the authorities remained indifferent while the teachers took out rallies at Multan, Dera Ghazi Khan, Sargodha, Gujranwala, Faisalabad, Rawalpindi and Sahiwal.

Published in Dawn, May 4th, 2015

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