TIMERGARA/ BATTAGRAM: The Lower Dir chapter of Tanzeem-i-Asateza Pakistan, a teachers’ wing of JI, on Sunday announced to start a protest drive against the Khyber Pakhtunkhwa government after Eidul Fitr for not keeping its promises made with the teachers.

The announcement was made during a meeting of the organisation with provincial president of All Teachers’ Coordination Council Mohammad Shah in the chair. Speaking on the occasion, Shafiqur Rehman, Abdul Khaliq and others alleged that the provincial government had ignored teachers in its budget.

The teachers’ leaders said that KP Assembly Speaker Asad Qaiser and senior minister Inayatullah Khan had assured them to announce timescale formula for teachers’ promotion, regularisation of all ad hoc teachers, teaching allowance and restoration of teachers’ son quota, but they did nothing.

In Battagram, teachers recruited through the NTS have lambasted the provincial government for not announcing their promised regularisation in the budget 2017-18.

Talking to mediapersons here, they claimed that they were recruited on ad hoc basis three years ago, and at that time the government made announcement of regularising all the NTS recruited teachers throughout Khyber Pakhtunkhwa, but the decision was not honoured.

They said that ad hoc teachers were not allowed to avail of leave like the permanent teachers, while they were also not given any pay raise in the budget.

They said that they also did not have timescale, service structure and loan facility.

Najeebullah, a primary schoolteacher, said after their recruitment the government promised that all the NTS-qualified teachers would be regularised, but after passage of three years such teachers were still working on ad hoc basis.

Shahid Ali, a secondary schoolteacher and provincial coordinator of NTS Teachers Association KP, said that they rejected the 2017-18 budget as it did not have anything for them.

Published in Dawn, June 12th, 2017