LARKANA: The Larkana circuit bench of the Sindh High Court on Tuesday issued notices to secretary of education, directors of schools education Larkana and IBA University Sukkur, directing them to appear in court on May 11 and respond to a petition that challenged the criteria for filling vacant posts of junior and primary schoolteachers.

The petitioner Nazir Ahmed Dhoon informed the court that the schools education department had invited applications from simple graduates (B.A, B.Com and B.Sc) through an advertisement instead of seeking requests from the candidates who had passed specialised teaching courses (associate degree of education and bachelor of education) to fill the vacancies.

Hundreds of public and private elementary colleges and universities were imparting ADE and B.Ed as these degrees were mandatory for teachers like MBBS was for doctors, B.E for engineers and LLB for advocates and judges, he argued.

Instead of selection from among the qualified candidates the department had announced selecting teachers from among non-qualified candidates, he said, adding that for doing so recruitment policy and rules had been abruptly changed with mala fide intention.

He said the department intended to make appointments on union council level but six UCs (Vikiya Sangi, UCs 16, 17, 18, 19 and 20 of Larkana Municipal Corporation) were missing from the list.

The vacancies of these UCs were deliberately mixed up with those of other UCs with mala fide intention and the vacancies of Vikya Sangi UC were shown in Dhamrah UC and UCs’ (16.17, 18, 19 and 20) were shown in other UCs, said the petitioner.

He said that by mixing up the seats allotted to different UCs the authorities concerned could trample upon merit and make discriminatory decisions.

He suspected that several hundred UCs might have been deleted from the record in the province with mala fide intention to make room for political favoritism. The appointments would be made through IBA, which had released sample papers on its website that included science, mathematics and computer science subjects, he said.

The petitioner asked how could the graduates in arts and commerce, who constituted about 70 per cent of the candidates, pass pure science subjects. How elder candidates, who had done their graduation about 15-20 years back, could attempt computer science subject as the subject had not been introduced in government schools and colleges especially in rural areas till this day, he said.

He said the third party IBA University hired for conducting the test would charge Rs700 per head whereas other third parties charged comparatively less i.e Rs200 or Rs300. Even Sindh Public Service Commission charged Rs500 and Rs1000 against 12 papers for its combined competitive examinations, he said.

He said that a few years back, the IBA Sukkur charged Rs200 per head for PST and JST when around 1.5 to 2 million candidates had applied for the posts.

The act of secretary of education was in violation of fundamental human rights as the right of qualified degree holders of A.D.E and B.Ed was protected under article 4 of the constitution and abrupt amendment to recruitment rules without any valid reason was void under article 8 of the constitution, he said.

The petitioner said that ignoring teachers’ professional degrees was violation of article 18, 37 and 38 of the constitution and requested the court that candidates having professional degrees of A.D.E and B.Ed be allowed to participate in the selection process of teachers.

The missing UCs and the seats for each UC be announced while the proposed test or examination for appointment of teachers be held in accordance with their qualification (B.A, B.Com and B.Sc) or the test be made a generalized one, he said.

He requested that portion of computer science be excised from the test as it had not yet been introduced in schools and colleges in rural areas.

Published in Dawn, May 5th, 2021