RAWALPINDI, Jan 14: About 1,200 recently-appointed teachers of the schools affiliated with the Punjab government have not been paid any salaries for the last four months since their recruitment, it has been learnt.

All these teachers, named as elementary educators, senior elementary educators and secondary educators, were appointed on contract basis by the district government in September last.

Talking to Dawn, some of the affected teachers held ‘bureaucratic red tape’ responsible for the inordinate delay in the release of their salaries.

The delay has sent a wave of great concern among the educators, who have been recruited purely on contract basis with fixed salaries and no fringe benefits. Elementary educators will be paid Rs4,200 per month, and senior elementary educators and secondary school educators are to receive Rs5,200 per month.

Union leaders of teachers have shown grave concern over the delay in releasing the salaries of the newly-appointed teachers.

“This is a great injustice with the educators. They have not only faced discrimination in appointment, but the meagre salaries fixed for them are also not being released,” a former president of the Punjab Teachers Union, Chaudhry Saghir Alam, said.

The district education officer (schools), Raja Zarat, when asked about the issue, said the delay was due to a process of verifying certificates and degrees of the new teachers. All the certificates, from matriculation to university level, will be verified from the institutions concerned, he said, adding that “only then their salaries will be released”.

He said he had directed the drawing and disbursing officer, Rawalpindi Tehsil, to release the salaries of all those educators whose certificates and degrees had been verified. He said charging of fees for verification has been introduced for the first time by the district government.

It is pertinent to mention here that verification of certificates and degrees or the fulfilment of any other such formalities is the job of the department concerned. No fees are charged for all these formalities.

However, as per the method adopted by the Rawalpindi district government, the appointed persons are asked to get their documents verified from the institutions concerned, teachers said.

In this process, the very purpose of verification, i.e. forgery, cannot be detected. Besides, the officials concerned will not have any yardstick to judge whether the verification is true or not.

The drawing and disbursing officer, Iqbal Naeem, however, denied this, saying only fees are deposited by the persons concerned and the verification was conducted departmentally.