Teachers’ association demands verification

Teachers in Gilgit-Baltistan are deprived of many facilities that teachers in other provinces have access to.


Shabbir Mir February 12, 2011

GILGIT: The president of the Gilgit-Baltistan Teachers’ Association (GBTA) has demanded that the degrees of government employees serving in various departments be verified through the courts.

“If the task is assigned to a court, the process will be completed in time and in a transparent way,” Shahid Hussain, the president of GBTA told The Express Tribune on Saturday. The regional government has hinted at initiating the process of verification of degrees this month.

He said that if the task was left to the government, chances are that it would be delayed or the process would not be transparent. “Influential people might also get away,” he said.

Gilgit-Baltistan Chief Minister Mehdi Shah said earlier this week that he wanted to have the degrees of all government officials checked and that those with fake degrees will be fired immediately.

Official sources estimate more than 70 per cent of employees below grade 17 in the education department, police, and public works department have been appointed on fake degrees. It is believed that nearly 8,000 employees could be fired if the process is completed transparently.

“They can start by verifying the teacher’s degrees,” he said, adding that most of the teachers have acquired their education from reputable institutions therefore it is less likely that they would have fake degrees.

Hussain added that teachers in Gilgit-Baltistan are deprived of many facilities that teachers in other provinces have access to.

Some teachers, he said, had not been promoted for the past 30 years. This, he said, is an injustice to the profession and the individuals. Teachers falling in grade 9 to 16 brackets have been undergoing discrimination as a method of their promotion is not yet decided, he added. “We urge the chief minister to look into this,” he added.

Published in The Express Tribune, February 13th, 2011.

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