PESHAWAR, Oct 25: All Primary Teachers Association (APTA) on Tuesday started boycott of classes in primary schools across Khyber Pakhtunkhwa to press the government for acceptance of their longstanding demands of service structure and implementation of time scale promotion policy.

“We have been demanding of the government to introduce time scale promotion policy for the primary school teachers, but it always ignored our demand,” said APTA president Khalid Khan while talking to Dawn. The primary teachers are kept deprived of their right to promotion, already given to teachers in other provinces, he said.

Mr Khan said that primary teachers in other provinces reached grade-16 till the retirement age while in KP they couldn’t go beyond grade-9. He said that the ANP-led government had been playing delaying tactics for the last three years, forcing the teachers to boycott classes.

He said that the teachers observed a token strike by wearing black armbands from Oct 1 to 9 and then a two-hour daily boycott of classed from Oct 10 to 22, but the government ignored their demand for announcing the promotion policy. “Now we will observe complete boycott of classes from Oct 25 to Nov 6,” the APTA president said.

Mr Khan said that they would stage a sit-in in Peshawar after the coming Eid if their demand for promotion was not accepted. The APTA’s district chapters have also been asked to hold protest rallies in their respective headquarters, he said.

However, this correspondent visited several primary schools and saw teachers busy performing duties as usual. Talking to Dawn, the teachers said that they couldn’t boycott classes, as the annual examinations were approaching nearer and they had to finish their courses.

When contacted, executive district officer (education) Hakimullah Khan said that he and his other staff visited many primary schools, but there was no boycott of classes by teachers.

In Chitral, the primary teachers started their boycott of classes on Tuesday and vowed that the strike would continue till acceptance of their demands.

District president of APTA, Chitral, Mr Ashraf told Dawn that there were over 1,400 male and female teachers in Chitral and they would not attend the classes till their demand for promotion was accepted by the government.