HARIPUR: The district officer education (male) has again terminated the services of over a dozen primary school teachers, who were reinstated on the orders of the Supreme Court.

The teachers also claimed that they hadn’t been paid salary for four months.

They told Dawn that teachers of the same cadre, who were also reinstated on the Supreme Court’s orders, continued to work in other districts of the province.

According to Akram Khan, senior vice-president of the All Primary Teachers Association, several PSTs appointed by the PPP government during the 1993-96 period were terminated, so they moved the Peshawar High Court for relief.

He said the high court’s Abbottabad bench had ordered the reinstatement of all those teachers in May 2016 but the education department challenged it in the Supreme Court, which upheld the high court’s order in May 2017.

The department called all sacked teachers back to work.

Mr Akram said three years later, the DO (education) issued orders for the termination of all reinstated teachers citing their failure to produce copies of their intermediate degrees and PTC training diplomas as the reason.

He said when the teachers were hired in 1996, matriculation was the qualification required for the recruitment of PST teachers and they all were matriculates.

“There’s no mention in the court’s orders that the sacked teachers were bound to submit copies of intermediate degrees on reinstatement,” he said.

He said all terminated teachers had been regularly doing duty since their dismissal last April.

When approached, DO (education) Mukhtiar Khan confirmed the termination of 15 teachers and insisted that they all were removed from service over failure to produce the required educational documents.

He said he would reinstate the teachers if his bosses formally asked him to do so.

KILLED: Two people were gunned down in Kotnajibullah area here on Tuesday evening.

The police insisted that old enmity was the cause of the double murder.

They said Arsalan Mushtaq and his father, Mohammad Mushtaq, residents of Bandi Sehran village, were attacked by gunmen Wasim Akram and Tariq Mehmood of the same village as the former were returning home after attending court hearing into a murder case.

The police said the firing victims died on the spot.

Published in Dawn, July 28th, 2021