LAHORE: The Punjab Teachers Union has rejected the plan of the Punjab School Education Department (SED) to forcibly retire schoolteachers who are 55 or above.

Talking to Dawn on Monday, the union’s secretary general Rana Liaqat said it was not a solution to retire the teachers at the age of 55 and the union would resist the government decision of forced retirement at all levels.

“Implementing the plan (of forced retirement) would be tantamount to paralysing the school education system in the province and we would start protest campaign against it.”

Mr Liaqat said the government’s decision would render around 150,000 teachers jobless, having catastrophic effects on the education department.

On the other hand, the Punjab School Education Department (SED) is seriously deliberating upon the option of sending home the teachers who are 55 or above.

According to some estimates, more than 100,000 teachers are believed to be affected if the department materializes its plan.

The SED had held a meeting on policy retirement of all teachers of 55 years of age or above that on May 9 at the office chamber of the SED.

One of the participants in the meeting told Dawn that the retirement plan was discussed during the PML-N government also but it was not materialised.

“The SED secretary during the PML-N tenure had proposed the plan of forced retirement, arguing that the teachers of 55 years age found it hard to teach.”

The source said there were deliberations that the teachers of the abovementioned age group should voluntarily get retirement and the government was planning to give them five-year increment. He said the recent meeting had discussed different modalities for retiring teachers.

He said they would soon check the budget to implement the plan while adding that the government was also backing the plan as retiring the teachers would also create around 150,000 jobs in the department and it would help the government to materialise its plan of giving 10m jobs.

Published in Dawn, May 14th, 2019