Boycotting classes: Ayub college teachers on strike against biometric attendance system

Say they will call off protest when they start receiving incentives as promised

ABBOTTABAD: The teaching staff of Ayub Medical College boycotted classes on Monday as a show of protest against the biometric attendance system installed at the facility.

The boycott was sparked by the fact that the teachers were not provided incentives as promised under the Medical Teaching Institutions (MTI) act.

Based on the call for a strike, lecturers, assistant professors, professors and senior professors of the college refused to take any classes.

The doctors’ association general secretary, Dr Zaheer, told The Express Tribune the Khyber-Pakhtunkhwa government introduced the MTI act, promising improvements in health care services and incentives for doctors and teachers. However, he said none of these vows were fulfilled.

He said the dean of the college and Ayub Teaching Hospital’s director, medical director and the secretary of the board of governors were getting monthly incentives worth hundreds of thousands of rupees.

He maintained that during Ramazan, the doctors of the hospital and staff of the college were asked by the director to mark their attendance on a biometric machine.

However, they chose to go on strike against these orders and suspended health services. After the strike, he said the hospital management agreed on withholding the decision until the doctors started receiving incentives, as promised under the MTI act.

Sans options

However, last week, the dean of the college issued directives to all the teachers to mark their attendance on the biometric machine. Zaheer added the officer-bearers of the doctors association even held a meeting with the dean, but she refused to cancel the order, forcing the teachers to boycott classes.

All teachers stayed away from classes for almost half the day. Ayub Teaching Hospital Board of Governors Chairperson Javed Pani held a meeting with the leaders of the doctors’ and teachers’ association and promised he would discuss the issue at the next meeting of the board of governors.

Till then, he told all the teachers to mark their attendance manually. However, Zaheer warned they would take to the streets if the board of governors failed to address their problems and forced them to use the biometric machine for attendance.

Published in The Express Tribune, July 26^th, 2016.