KARACHI: Employees of the Sindh education department, comprising mainly teachers, protesting against the provincial education secretary were baton-charged and tear-gassed as they entered the ‘Red Zone’ to stage a sit-in outside CM House on Wednesday.

Seeking payment of salaries and removal of the secretary, the marchers managed to reach the PIDC traffic intersection from the Karachi Press Club after breaching a security layer and staged a sit-in there as the way to CM House was closed by the law-enforcers by placing containers on the road.

The police used water cannons to keep the protesters away from the Red Zone (which covers Governor House, Rangers headquarters, CM House and surrounding areas where all sorts of protests and rallies have been banned) but later had to resort to tear-gas shelling and a baton-charge to disperse the crowd.

Some protesting teachers were also picked up by the law-enforcers.

Several hundred teachers had converged outside the press club where their representatives delivered speeches in support of their demands. They said that thousands of teachers were sacked while many teachers had been deprived of their salaries for the past several months and for years in some cases. They sought removal of the Sindh education secretary.

Demands include removal of education secretary and payment of salaries

From the press club, many of the protesting teachers marched to Fawwara Chowk after passing through Zainab Market. Contingents of police deployed there prevented the protesting teachers from moving further. The officials said the area had been declared ‘Red Zone’ where all sorts of protests and rallies had been banned due to the ‘sensitivity’ of the locality.

“We initially used water cannons followed by a baton-charge and tear-gas shelling to disperse the protesting teachers,” said Karachi-South DIG Dr Jamil Ahmed.

“We tried to persuade them to restrict their protest to the press club, which was a proper place for it, but they [teachers] were not willing to talk,” said the DIG.

Their sole demand was the removal of the Sindh education secretary, he added.

The officer said: “We told them that we don’t have the authority to do anything about this demand, as the competent authority is the chief minister who is in Dubai. The police also conveyed the teachers’ demand to the CM House staff who suggested that they wait for a day or two until the chief minister returns.”

Around 100 teachers managed to reach the main gate of Governor House and then proceeded further to reach the PIDC traffic intersection where they were joined by hundreds of other protesting teachers.

Sindh Education Employees Alliance (SEEA) convenor Intizar Shalgari said the SEEA comprised eight associations of education department employees including teachers. He said their main demand was the removal of the education secretary who had allegedly subjected the teachers to ‘undesirable attitude’. “Thousands of teachers have been sacked. Thousands of teachers have been deprived of salaries for the past several months and years,” he said.

They staged a sit-in at the traffic intersection, demanding that the authorities hold talks with them for the redress of their grievances.

Dr Jamil said the teachers allegedly resorted to hooliganism and ‘compelled’ the police to respond with a ‘light’ baton charge and tear-gas shelling to disperse them. “We did not want to use force against the teachers but they forced us to do so,” he said.

He said the police detained over a dozen teachers who were likely to be released sometime later.

However, Mr Shalgari told Dawn that the police detained around 200 teachers. He said the police authorities announced that they would be released but only 60 teachers had been released so far. The whereabouts of 140 teachers were not known, he said.

The SEEA convenor added that ‘hundreds’ of teachers were facing ‘inquiries’. The teachers submitted their charter of demand before the authorities, he said.

Mr Shalgari said some junior officers from CM House and the Sindh Secretariat approached them for talks. He demanded that the chief minister or chief secretary himself talk to them and a three-member team, including the education minister, be formed to address their grievances, otherwise, they would continue the sit-in.

Secretary’s comment

Meanwhile, Sindh education secretary Dr Fazlullah Pechuho was quoted by some news channels as saying that the teachers protesting in Karachi remained ‘absent’ from duty, therefore, their salary had been stopped.

“Teachers would not be given the pay as long as they remained absent from their schools,” he said.

Those who call themselves as primary teachers could not even spell the word ‘primary’, the bureaucrat said. Senior education minister Nisar Ahmed Khuhro stated that the government “did not believe in torturing the teachers but they should follow the law”.

“In democracy, everyone has the right to protest, but the teachers’ protest in the Red Zone was neither advisable nor suitable,” added the minister.

“Only talks are solution to a problem,” Mr Khuhro said, adding that the teachers should come forward with legitimate grievances and the government would address their legitimate demands. The education minister demanded release of detained teachers.

Published in Dawn, November 26th, 2015