Salary issue: Contractual staff of 20 model colleges may go on strike

ISLAMABAD:

About 1,600 teaching and non-teaching contractual staff of 20 Model Colleges have not received their salaries for January and  are now contemplating going on strike.

After the Capital Administration and Development Division (CADD) abolished student fees, no alternative plan has been devised to generate revenue to pay staff salaries.

Adnan Khan, a daily wager who teaches intermediate and bachelor students at Islamabad Model College for Boys G-6/3, said, “I have not received the salary for the month of January and it is unclear whether we would be paid in the coming months.”

Another teacher, Nadeem Toori, said that their college has over 100 daily wagers and their colleagues were contemplating going on strike. He said that they would mull the proposal on Monday (today).

Around 500 contractual employees have already challenged the regularisation issue in the Islamabad High Court, but the AGPR made it clear in court that it would be impossible to absorb them all.

Meanwhile, the principal of a model college said the situation was the result of institutions that hired the staff without formally creating posts and also did not take CADD into confidence.

“I am paying salaries for my contractual staffers from the private funds, so why can’t others? It is just because of lack of management and transparency in financial affairs,” he said.

A CADD joint secretary said that the division was not in a position to make payments to such a huge number of employees for many reasons. He said that a case was also pending in court and a clear-cut policy could only be adopted once the court reaches a verdict.

The joint secretary said that all the institutions would submit complete data about the exact number of contractual staff, justification too retain them, and the workload at the institutions.

“The data will be submitted to CADD on Monday and the picture will then become clearer.”

Published in The Express Tribune, February 10^th, 2014.