PESHAWAR: The elementary and secondary education department has terminated the services of 104 teachers and other employees in the merged tribal districts for securing job on fake degrees or absenting themselves from duty for a long time during the last two decades.

The department had got control of the erstwhile Fata’s educational setup after the region’s merger with KP.

A senior official of the education department told Dawn that the affairs of education sector in ex-Fata before merger were ablack hole as both appointments and services were badly managed.

Officials say sackings come over fake degrees, absenteeism

“The scrutiny of the education department’s employees from Class IV officials to BPS-20 principals in merged districts is under way,” he said.

The official believed that the exercise would lead to the sacking of a large number of teachers and other employees over fake degrees.

He said of the sacked employees, 46 were senior school teachers working on BPS-17 posts, while the others were primary schoolteachers and other lower grade employees.

The official said those senior teachers from Mohmand, Bajaur and Khyber tribal districts had produced bogus degrees to secure jobs in 2012-13.

He said the department sacked employees after completing codal formalities, including the issuance of show cause notices and holding of formal inquiries.

The official said the others lost job over ‘perpetual absenteeism’, which showed that they were either ghost employees or weren’t not present in the country or their domicile districts.

Regarding South and North Waziristan, he said the department didn’t have an access to both tribal districts but there, too, must be teachers appointed on fake degrees.

The official said the deputy commissioners of the respective districts would register criminal cases against fake and absentee teachers.

He said the department had already issued letters to deputy commissioners across tribal districts for the purpose and recover salaries from sacked employees.

A district education officer from the erstwhile Fata told Dawn that he had terminated a teacher, who had been working abroad since 2001 without obtaining the official permission.

He said before the Fata-KP merger, the relevant authorities turned a blind eye to such cases.

The DEO claimed that majority of the Class-IV employees in tribal districts had hired proxies for a long time.

When contacted, adviser to the chief minister on elementary and secondary education Ziaullah Bangash said he had directed the education department to verify the academic degrees and certificates of all employees in tribal districts.

“On one hand, there is joblessness in tribal districts and on the other, many are in government departments there in violation of the law,” he said.

The adviser said over 100 employees had been fired after the scrutiny of their documents, while the degrees of others were also being verified.

He said the department was trying to post competent and qualified teachers to government schools in merged districts as the region had suffered a lot for many years.

Published in Dawn, October 13th, 2019