PESHAWAR: Around 45 secondary school teachers (SST) have moved the Peshawar High Court against the elementary and secondary education department over its failure to implement e-transfer policy outside districts.

The teachers both men and women serving in different districts have jointly filed a petition with the high court seeking directives for the respondents, including the secondary elementary and secondary education (E&SE), to implement that policy for their inter-district transfer.

The respondents in the petition filed through lawyer Abbas Khan Sangeen are the provincial government through its chief secretary, secretary of the E&SE department, and director (E&SE).

The petitioners said the government had launched a smart phone application in Aug 2019 for the teachers desirous to be transferred to schools of choice.

Seek enforcement of policy for inter-district transfers

They added that since then, the E&SE department invited applications through e-transfer application/system from all teachers seeking transfer at the start of the new academic session.

The petitioners said the department uploaded a post on its official Facebook page on June 8, 2021,in respect of e-transfer policy, so they submitted applications online that were scrutinised and verified accordingly. They claimed that orders for the transfer of several other teachers were issued except them and some others.

The petitioners claimed that in accordance with the e-transfer policy mechanism, the computer-generated recommendations of transfers of the petitioners were issued but the E&SE secretary was reluctant to issue the same to them.

They claimed that when they approached the secretary, they were told that e-transfer policy/application was for intra-district transfers and not inter-district ones.

The petitioners contended that they had submitted their representation on e-transfer website in response of which it was mentioned that due to a ban on inter-district transfers, their request could not be entertained for the time being.

They said they had submitted application to the relevant authorities, but to no avail, so they had to move the high court.

The petitioners contended that the act of the respondents was illegal and against the basic norms of justice, so the involvement of the high court was needed.

They said the SST was a provincial cadre post just like those of subject specialists and the headmasters and the e-transfer policy was equally applicable to them, but in their cases, the respondents were exercising discrimination, which was a violation of Articles 4 and 25 of the Constitution.

The petitioners said there were several women teachers, who got married in districts other than their native ones and had applied for transfer to the districts of their spouses, but their pleas wasn’t accepted.

Published in Dawn, September 5th, 2021