LAHORE: Teachers of public schools complain the government has virtually ‘stopped’ them from availing themselves of leaves, thus making their lives miserable.

Some teachers Dawn spoke to on Monday said they were not even allowed two leaves a month, which are permissible under the rules.

“The education department’s strict policy to ensure over 90 per cent of attendance in the schools is depriving us of our legal right as the heads (of the schools) are passing the pressure onto us in this regard,” a teacher said.

The teachers alleged that the department’s monitoring cell had literally ‘threatened’ the school administrations to stop the teachers from going on a leave, otherwise the heads would face “strict” departmental action.

In one such example on Monday, the principal of Government Girls Higher Secondary School, Samanabad, issued show-cause notices to two teachers over a ‘sick leave’.

An official told Dawn the school administration had marked ‘sick leave’ of the two teachers in the attendance register but it had to change this into ‘absent’ on the ‘order’ of an official of the district government monitoring cell.

“The monitoring cell official told the school administration to convert the sick leave of the teachers in question into ‘absent’ or be ready to face action from the executive district officer (Education),” he said.

A senior woman schoolteacher said the teachers were feeling so ‘terrorised’ that some seniors were considering to seek early retirement. “In case of an emergency or health issue one has to take leave and the education authorities should realise this,” she said.

Education EDO Pervaiz Akhtar told Dawn that his department had never forced any institution to disallow two leave a month.

“An investigation will be launched if any monitoring official forced the school administration to convert the teachers’ sick leaves into absence,” he said, adding that he had earlier fired an official over such conduct.

Mr Akhtar said: “Our target in the public schools is to ensure over 90pc teachers attendance so that education quality could be improved.”

Published in Dawn, September 15th, 2015

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