LAHORE: The sit-in of secondary school educators (SSEs) and assistant education officers (AEOs) from all districts of the province demanding regularisation of their service without the PPSC condition continued for the fifth consecutive day on Monday.

The SSEs and AEOs are protesting outside the Chief Minister House. Around 11,000 of them had been recruited by the previous government and the incumbents had forwarded a summary to the provincial cabinet about regularisation of their services without sitting the PPSC test. However, the summary has not been approved for over two years.

The SSEs and AEOs were hired through a competitive examination in all 36 districts for the first time. The recruitment policy of 2016-17 and 2018 had a mechanism that empowered the District Recruitment Committees, headed by the deputy commissioner, to hire AEOs on the district level through the National Testing Service.

The policy directed the committees to conduct interviews of the candidates successful in written tests and hire SSEs and AEOs on contracts.

Now, the provincial government planned to conduct a test for the regularisation of the same service, which would be granted to those who secured at least 60 marks out of 100 in a test designed on the pattern of the Graduate Record Examination. The remaining 40 marks included questions from physics, chemistry and biology.

The protesters questioned how the government would justify conducting a test/interview for the same positions after appointing people on them. They said they would not sit any test and wanted unconditional regularisation.

They said the government was denying them their right to regularisation.

“The government is disseminating the message that no one should effectively take charge of the government institutions and it is portraying that the children of the poor and vulnerable communities may continue to suffer from the downtrodden lifestyle due to a lack of education,” they stressed.

Published in Dawn, March 23rd, 2021