LAHORE: The Programme Monitoring and Implementation Unit (PMIU) on Saturday issued Rs72 million for the salaries of teachers for the afternoon schools – Insaf Schools – launched in nine district of Punjab.

The government intends to start these afternoon schools in 20 districts of the province and in the first phase of the programme 1,700 such institutes have been started in nine districts of the province. The programme has been launched in 20 schools of each district, including Lahore, Bhakkar, Jhang, Dera Ghazi Khan, Rawalpindi, Rahim Yar Khan, Multan, Mianwali and Sargodha.

The PMIU had issued the funds for the first quarter of the year – from January to March 2020. Earlier the PMIU had issued the letter for release of funds and government had paid the salaries of two quarters.

Lahore District Education Authority had issued Rs209 million for the rent of buildings of 100 Insaf Schools, but the salaries of most of the teachers were delayed causing frustration among them. Because of the delay in salaries many teachers had left the schools.

Meanwhile, seven of the Insaf Schools of Lahore had again advertised jobs to hire teachers to overcome staff shortage.

IT TEACHERS: Punjab Information Technology (IT) teachers have announced to launch an agitation against non-payment of compensation and travelling allowances.

Punjab IT Teachers Association leaders Aqeel Azad, Abdul Sattar Buzdar, Adeel Abbas, Faisal Ghafoor, Sajjad Hussain, Abdullah Shafiq, Atif Satti, Mohammad Jalil, Malik Amanullah and Mohammad Imran have said that despite passage of two months the IT teachers who performed various duties related to Class VIII exam were not paid the allowances.

The teachers had performed duties assupervisors, superintendents, resident inspectors, mobile inspectors and marking staff.

Besides, the teachers are also performing duties at wheat procurement centres, distribution of funds at Ehsas Kiflat centres and implementation of Corona SOPs in the markets and mosques.

The IT teacher leaders further said that in the present packed examination system, IT teachers were responsible for collecting the admission forms of the students, feeding all the data, issuing roll number slips, setting up examination centres and feeding the data of marking papers.

However, they regretted, no compensation had been paid to the IT teachers yet.

They demanded that Minister of Education Murad Ras and Punjab school education secretary should order immediate payment of the IT teachers dues.

Published in Dawn, May 24th, 2020