PESHAWAR: Employees of the Board of Intermediate and Secondary Education (BISE), Peshawar, on Tuesday locked their offices and did not allow any official business to record their protest against delay in acceptance of their demands for promotion and representation on the board making a uniform service structure for all the boards.

The employees also chanted slogans against the board chairman for not accepting their demands despite a court decision in their favour. The students who visited the board to submit forms for the secondary school certificate examinations suffered a lot.

Talking to this correspondent, president of the employees Mohammad Tariq Safi said that the board administration had posted a teacher as director research while the post of assistant secretary/assistant controller was vacant since long which was the right of board employees.

Mr Safi said that the Elementary and Secondary Education Department was working on making a uniform service structure for all board employees which would affect their seniority.

Seek promotion, representation on body making service structure

“It is our demand that the employees’ representatives should also be taken on board for making the uniform service structure,” he said.

The Peshawar High Court had ordered the education department for making a uniform service structure as currently each board had its own service structure for the employees, he said. Once the uniform service structure was established then employees of the seven education boards would be transferable from one board to another.

The employees, however, called off their strike when adviser to the chief minister for E&SE Department Ziaullah Bangash visited the board and assured them that their demands would be accepted, said Mr Safi.

When contacted, Peshawar board chairman Dr Fazlur Rehman said that there were three principal positions in the board to be filled by the chief minister by posting the officials on deputation, which included that of chairman, controller and secretary.

He said that one-third of the remaining posts would be filled on merit and two-thirds through promotion.

The chairman said that the board employees were not ready to accept the rule of merit rather insisting on promotion based on the length of service. He said that the PHC verdict regarding employees’ promotion would be challenged in the Supreme Court.

Published in Dawn, December 19th, 2018