LAHORE: In the first phase of e-Transfer facility, the Punjab School Education Department received 32,231 applications from teachers and issued transfer orders for 16,753 of them from May 17 to June 29.

As many as 207,151 teachers have logged into the system since May 2019 for 63,879 vacant posts of the province. The department received 32,231 applications with 82,496 preferences in the first phase within the teachers’ districts from May 17 till June 29. Of the 16,753 applicants who were issued transfer orders, 16,547 have joined their posts at new schools.

Under the phase-2 for the transfer outside districts in July, 3,475 applications with 13,265 preferences were received. The process of verification would be completed by July 31.

Ateequr Rahman, a secondary schoolteacher among the 400,000 public schoolteachers in Punjab, was deputed at a high school in district Rajanpur. He would commute 80km from his home to his school daily and it would take almost four hours per day of a six-day week. He followed this arduous routine for seven years while continuously making attempts to get transferred to another school near his home.

“It is almost unthinkable to get a transfer without an influential reference. I had found a teacher to use the option of mutual transfer to swap schools with him but the price was too high as he demanded the amount that was unaffordable for me. There was no way I could afford it,” said Ateeq.

Last month, Ateeq became one of the 32,000 schoolteachers across Punjab who submitted applications for transfer via their mobile phones – using the e-Trasnfer system introduced by the School Education Department (SED). These teachers submitted 82,000 transfer preferences.

Ateeq’s application made it to the top of the waitlist for the vacant position at a public school close to his home to his utter amazement. He also received an SMS to visit the district education office (DEO) on a scheduled day with his original documents.

On June 29, Ateeq received his ‘transfer letter’ on his mobile phone, confirming his appointment at the school close to his parental home. He has joined his new post without any delay and without having to look for any reference, humiliation, long queues outside offices, lost files or bribe.

Ateeq’s happiness is result of a revolutionary project of the SED launched in collaboration with the Punjab Information Technology Board (PITB) with an objective to facilitate the teachers as much as possible to enable them to focus on teaching in 50,000 public schools of the province.

The department was operating traditionally in a manual mode and had an almost disruptive effect on the way, with knowledge of policies and available vacant posts in the hands of only a few.

The government, for the first time in the history of the department, has made available teacher-transfer policies and eligibility criteria online during the current year, all vacant posts at each school were searchable online and the formula for automatic computation of application-score has been made public. Teachers are able to apply for transfers and receive updates via convenience of their mobile phones. Wait-lists for each vacant posts and the generation of final transfer orders have been completely automated without any human intervention.

The e-Transfer system is not only pro-teacher but a pro-school as well. Using this system, the SED has been able to restrict transfers out of the public primary schools that already have a shortage of teachers and to restrict transfers into schools that have surplus teachers – based on prevailing student-teacher ratios.

Punjab Teacher’s Union General Secretary Rana Liaqat told Dawn that he had not found any better system for transfer and posting during his 33 years service.

Welcoming the e-Transfer system, he said it had ended bribe and favouritism and thousands of teachers received orders without pay a single penny.

“It not only saved money of thousands of teachers but also stopped blackmail of the women teachers at the hands of clerical staff,” he said.

Mr Liaqat added that a teacher had to apply for transfer online with five preferences and he had received the order without any hassle, wait and other issues.

Mr Liaqat said the teachers, officers and clerics were involved in bogus transfers and the system had also stopped it and it also ended ghost schools in the province.

Published in Dawn, July 26th, 2019