KARACHI, June 14: A good number of teaching and non- teaching staff in government schools fail to get their salaries or allowances on time due to apathy of the education officials posted in Towns, said sources in the teachers’ community.

There are evidences that teachers have to wait for their salaries sometimes for over two months. “Sometimes we are paid in parts and have to wait for another three to six months for the clearance of the arrears,” said a teacher in North Karachi Town.

However, officials in the education offices maintained that such occurrences are very rare and that too for some technical reasons.

It was learnt that a number of teachers have been running from pillar to post for receiving their salaries or any part of that, despite lapse of five months. “We visit the education offices and exhaust ourselves in pursuing the officials to feel our hardship and release withheld salaries or part of that,” said a non-teaching staff in the SITE Town.

According to sources in schools, these were the assistant district officers education or district officers who, normally, finalized the list of employees working in their jurisdiction and keep informing the Accounts Office of the province from time to time about the staff position.

In the case of primary schools staff, the cheques are delivered to the school heads who draw cash from banks and then distribute the amount as per bills among the staff every month.

For secondary school staff, school heads prepare cheques in the name of staffers separately in line with the payroll issued by AG office. The amount is then released in chunk to banks where schools maintain its accounts.

Problems arose due to supply of incorrect data pertaining to leaves or any official enquiry against any person to the AG office by respective school heads, said an office- bearer of a schoolteachers’ association, adding that things were generally non-transparent or non-effective.

The concerned staff at education office claimed that the salaries were not released in full due to mis-feeding of computers or because of faulty release of pay-bills to the school heads. “We have to prepare extra-bills and submit that to the AG office in case the payment is not made promptly or it remained incomplete,” informed an official at a Town education office.

The incidence of withholding of payments to staff has increased in recent months, said a teacher in Orangi Town, alleging that staff concerned at the educational offices also demanded extra-payment for any expedition in payment.

“You visit either the town office, the district office or the central office at Karimabad and you will witness the staff talking to teachers or non-teaching staff, including watchmen or peons, in a harsh way, which could lead to any peculiar dealing as well,” added a school staff in Nazimabad.

A visit to an assistant district education office showed that a clerk was sitting over the case of payment of salaries for over five months. He admitted that some cases of non-payment were pending only because he did not get enough time to take them up and submit the bill to the AG office.

It was said that work load at the education offices had increased after the enforcement of the devolution system. “Earlier, there were four clerks for the purpose, but now we have only two,” said an official at a Town education office, complaining that the number of schools, which the education office staff had to deal with, had also increased from 12 to 19.

However, the affected staff maintained that the cases of non-payment or part payment, which were generally attributed to the computers of the AG office, hardly ranged from ten to 15 on an average per month at each Town and staff should not take extraordinary time for getting such cases cleared. They should understand the problems of the salaried class people, he maintained.