RAWALPINDI, Dec 12: About 6,700 low-paid teachers of the non-formal schools affiliated with the federal education ministry have not been paid their salaries for the last five months, Dawn has learnt.

The long delay is due to the negligence of the education ministry’s officials concerned, sources said. They added that no budgetary allocation had been made for the 6,700 non-formal schools being run by the education ministry’s Literacy Cell, as a proposal was under consideration that the project should be closed.

However, the project continued and only the old Chief Executive Literacy Commission was renamed as the Literacy Cell and put under the direct control of the education ministry. It was after that the ministry had to prepare a summary for the allocation of funds for these schools and release teachers’ salaries.

This summary, however, has fallen prey to bureaucratic red tapism, the sources said, adding that for the last five months, it had been circulating between education, planning and finance ministries.

The affected teachers, who are facing grave problems, have been visiting the Cell consistently to inquire about the release of their salaries. “They will have to spend this Eid without their pay”, a Cell official said.

About 46 such schools are being run in the far-flung areas of Rawalpindi, and 80 are functioning in the peripheral localities of the federal capital.

The teachers are paid only Rs1,000 per month, and even this amount is not paid in time. Often they are paid after three to four months, however, this time they have not been paid for the last five months.

The procedure of payment is also very complicated, as the ministry sends the salaries’ cheque to the AGPR, which releases the amount to the Literacy Cell when demanded. The Cell sends the money to the provincial literacy coordinators, who, then, hand it over to different NGOs for distribution among school teachers. The whole process is so lengthy that if an individual’s salary gets stuck at any stage, it takes a lot of time to get it released.

The salary of a teacher at New Lalazar has not been paid for the last 23 months. The school is regularly checked and the teacher’s performance is satisfactory according to the officials concerned. She is being false assurances and asked to continue working, but nothing has been done so far to pay her dues. The NGO concerned, Ilum, blames the provincial coordinator for not releasing her salary.

The joint educational advisor and the literacy cell in charge, Najmuddin Mangrio, when asked to comment on the matter, said no allocation had been made for the salaries of these teachers in the budget 2001-2002, because the Literacy Commission previously running these schools was wrapped up.

“But, now we are clarifying the things”, he said, adding that the case for the release of salaries had been approved from the Planning Commission and Finance Division and was submitted to the AGPR. “We hope the salaries will be released before Eid”.