RAHIM YAR KHAN: Aerial firing outside a private school created panic among students, teachers and staff in Khanpur on Wednesday while police registered a first information report of the incident.

Reports said two partners - Muhammad Asif and Abid Almas of ILM Knowledge School - were present at the director office in the school building at Allama Iqbal Town. Suddenly a quarrel started among them on the issue of income and meanwhile Asif called the police and parents of the students.

Some men [of the partners] resorted to aerial firing at the main gate in the presence of police. The students and female teachers of the school gathered and protested against the incident. Both groups exchanged harsh words and used expletives but police played its role as a silent spectator.

On the complaint of a student’s father Ali Turab Bhular, police registered a case under sections 506-B, 149, 337, 112 and 109 of Pakistan Penal Code of the incident without nominating anyone.

PROTEST: The Basic Education Community Teachers (BECT) at district press club on Wednesday said the authorities told them that the unpaid salaries for 15 months would be released and minimum per month basic salary would be fixed at Rs30,000 but nothing was done so far.

BECT district president Tahira Kulsum and tehsil president Bushra Parveen told journalists that they had been facing difficulties due to non-payment of their salaries for the last 15 months.

They said 5,218 teachers had been performing their duties since 1995 in the country. In 2011, after a protest at Islamabad, their project officers and grade-IV employees were regularised but teachers were still deprived of the facility.

In 2018, the federal government had promised in an agreement to regularise them within a year but to no avail.

In 2019, they said, when these neglected teachers raised voice for their rights, they were arrested and shifted to Adiala jail.

They said in 2020, the standing committee recommended that these teachers should be regularised but the federal government after calling the CCI meeting handed over the project to provinces.

And now the Punjab government has failed to release the salaries to all teachers in the province since July, 2021.

The teachers demanded that they should be merged in government schools.

Published in Dawn, October 6th, 2022