Teachers’ regularisation: Senate passes motion to regularise daily-wagers

The issue has been shuffling between ministries for years

ISLAMABAD: The Senate on Friday passed a unanimous motion to regularise the services of daily-wage teaching and non-teaching staff at government schools and colleges in Islamabad.

These daily-wagers have been working for years in different federal government institutions falling under the Federal Directorate of Education. The daily-wagers also staged a sit-in for 70 days, besides regular street protests demanding regularisation, only to be told to approach one authority or the other.

A week ago, a meeting of the Senate Standing Committee on Cabinet Secretariat had taken up the issue and decided to take up the matter in Senate. On January 25 this year, the committee had directed the Capital Administration and Development Division (CADD) to regularise the services of the daily-wagers.

A CADD official had told the committee that the division had moved a summary to the Prime Minister’s Office regarding daily-wage teachers, but the PM Office had turned it down due to some objections.

A motion was moved by Senator Kalsoom Parveen on the behalf of the standing committee to regularise some 1,500 daily-wagers on the same lines as employees of other ministries, who were regularised in 2011-12 by a special committee headed by PPP’s Khursheed Shah.

The standing committee has been discussing the issue since then, and the Islamabad High Court had also given directives in favour of the teachers.

While visiting a school, Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif had also directed the officials to look into the case of daily wagers. Some of the teachers recommended for regularisation were denied joining letters at the eleventh hour after teachers who were not regularised challenged the selective process.

On Friday, the committee members moved the motion in the upper house in favour of the daily-wager employees and that was unanimously passed. No senator opposed the motion, while, two senators Babar Awan and Parveen, spoke on the floor in favour of the motion.

“Employees working for just Rs8000 for years have become rolling stones between various ministries,” said Senator Parveen. “The bureaucracy is not ready to regularise them, even though other employees are being regularised. The committee has decided to resolve this issue once and for all by putting it before the house,” she said.

After Eid, the process of regularisation will be started, she said, adding that they will get the same benefits as regular employees.

Published in The Express Tribune, September 10^th, 2016.