MULTAN, Oct 5: With the world observing ‘Teachers Day’ on Thursday, those appointed on a contract are still deprived of 15 per cent increase in salaries announced by the federal and provincial governments in their budgets.

Multan district president of the Punjab Teacher’s Union Aslam Saghar said services of contract teachers in the NWFP and Sindh had already been regularised but the Punjab government has not yet done so. He said the government was paying Rs135 daily allowance to the educators who were on contract while a mason and a labourer were getting Rs300 and Rs250 a day.

He said 350,000 teachers had been working in 68,000 schools in Punjab and 50 per cent of them on contract, while 1,700 posts of teachers in grade 17 to 19 were on contract.

He said appointment in other departments, including army and police, were being made on regular basis while the government was insisting to appoint teachers on contract.

He said the government was responsible for the low status of teachers in Pakistan and even president would not like to make his children teacher.

Mr Saghar said the government has established monitoring teams comprising ex-armymen to monitor the government educational institutions and gave them motorcycles while it was not ready to upgrade the status of teachers.

He said allocation for education in budgets had always been very small and only 10 per cent of it was being used to pay salaries. In the US, 48 per cent of educational budget was being spent on salaries of teachers.

He claimed a major chunk of the budget was being embezzled in the name of government schemes like providing free books to children, giving five-kg ghee tins and lunch to them. Even lunch was not being provided in schools of Multan, he added.

He said the money the government was spending on advertisements should be spent on betterment of teachers. He demanded immediate regularisation of the teachers and 15 per cent increase in their salaries.