CHITRAL: The independent monitoring unit (IMU) here has traced teachers who have been absent from duty for the last five years.

Talking to Dawn, a source in the IMU claimed that two primary school teachers, Nazneen Ara and Kaiful Wara of government primary schools, Lachigram, had been absent from duty since 2009, but the education department did not take any action against them.

Requesting not to be named, the source said that it was during monitoring that absenteeism of teachers was detected, which was not possible without collusion of the education department authorities.

He said that the cases were taken up with the department after which the proceedings started against the teachers as per service rules. Ultimately, the two teachers were dismissed from service last week, he said.

The source said that a number of other such cases had also been detected and investigation was underway. However, he said that it would be premature to disclose names of such teachers, as this might harm the investigation process.

Meanwhile, a teacher told Dawn on condition of anonymity that DEO (female) has violated the official policy in postings of primary school teachers (PSTs).

He said that under the policy the PSTs had been categorised on the basis of grade as PST (grade-12), senior PST (grade-14) and head teacher (grade-15). He said that instead of one head teacher two or more head teachers had been posted in most of the girls primary schools in the town in violation of the policy. He said that in government girls primary school, Muldeh, four head teachers were working against one such post while the primary schools in remote areas had been without head teachers since long.

When contacted, DEO (female) Zuhra Jalal confirmed that the two teachers were terminated from service under the KP Removal from Service Act after fulfilling necessary formalities. However, she denied the claim of IMU and said that the action was taken by the education department itself without taking dictation from any other body.

About the appointment of head teachers, she said that she had done it after bringing the matter into the notice of director of education. However, she had no answer when asked about absence of the two teachers since 2009.

Published in Dawn, October 5th, 2014