LAHORE, Sept 14: With the Punjab education department recruiting educators against around 35,000 posts in the province, the candidates are complaining that the department is selling application forms at the rate of Rs50 apiece.

A number of applicants told Dawn that they had to apply for a number of posts as the government offered school-specific contract jobs. They were bound to deposit the fee in banks and then collect forms from the district education officers concerned.

Talking to Dawn, Joint Action Committee chairman Rana Muhammad Arshad said the government was extorting money from poor applicants. He claimed that a minimum of 25 applications were being submitted against each post. He also claimed that against 500 posts in Lahore, the DEO office had received almost 6,000 applications.

Though the government was claiming that it was going for a Parah Likha Punjab, Mr Arshad said it was also denying promotion to the serving teachers. He claimed that no PTC had been promoted as EST for the last three years, while only a few ESTs had been promoted as SSTs. He also claimed that the posts to be filled by promotion had also been included in the posts being offered on contract basis.