PESHAWAR, Jan 26: Teachers of Community Model Schools (CMSs) in Fata have threatened to close 1,200 educational institutes working under the National Education Foundation (NEF) if its chairman is not removed.

The teachers from Mohmand, Bajaur and Khyber agencies said they were not only under-paid but had also not been given their salary for five months. They accused the chairman of the foundation, a retired army officer, of corruption. They also said the “inefficient” administration of the foundation had affected functioning of the 1,200 Community Model Schools in the tribal region.

Speaking at a press conference at the press club here on Monday, Fata Community Model Schools Teachers’ Association president Irshad Ali said the present chairman should be removed, otherwise they would close the schools.

These schools have been working as formal schools under the public-private partnership since 1998. The NEF used to provide Rs1,375 per child annually to each school, but when the present chairman took charge in 2005 things started to deteriorate. The NEF converted 350 CMSs into 1,200 non-formal schools and deprived them of many incentives.

The teachers said the change in the status of schools from formal to non-formal had marred the functioning of these institutes. No tuition fee was fixed and Rs1,000 per month was allocated for the schools by the NEF board of governors for its expenditure, but they received the amount on quarterly basis.

There are more than 1,300 teachers in the 1,200 schools, who receive a salary of Rs3,000 per month.

“The teachers’ salary is half of the minimum wages of Rs6,000 fixed by the government. This speaks of the plight of the education sector in the tribal region”, Mr Ali said.

Mohammad Israr Khan, principal of one the schools, said teachers had not been paid their salaries for five months.

“Instead of giving credit to us for running schools in such backward areas, these community schools have been deprived of the meagre funds they used to get too, the teachers said.

“We are running co-education schools in conflict-hit areas in a situation where government is unable to run schools,” they maintained.

The local community was supposed to invest the endowment fund of Rs500,000 for spending the profit on the schools, but the NEF chairman had transferred the money from the joint account to some other account and deprived the schools of the amount, they alleged.

The teachers claimed that the 71-year-old chairman was not only overage for the post, but was also a hurdle in development of the schools, including primary, middle and high schools, where the number of students in a school was 150-600.

The Norwegian government wanted to fund the project and was ready to provide Rs5 million for the school buildings. There was also a consensus among the board of governors of the schools that the buildings should be constructed. The Norwegian government wanted the schools to work under the Fata education directorate, but the chairman cancelled the project.

“Now he himself is not able to run the project and is lavishly spending, but not on schools,” the teachers said.

The teachers called upon the government to remove the NEF chairman and appoint an educationist against the post.

They demanded that teachers working in these schools for 10 years should be regularised and given salaries in accordance with their educational qualification. The community model schools should be linked with the World Food Programme to benefit the community, they said.

They warned that if the federal government did not take any action by Feb 10, they would close the schools in protest.