Province-wide protest: Teachers out to teach lesson to Punjab govt

Threaten to hold demonstrations until year end

LAHORE: More than a hundred public school teachers kicked off a province-wide protest against the Punjab government over the School Education Department’s failure to meet ‘mutually agreed’ demands of the teachers on Monday.

The protest outside Lahore Press Club was organised by Grand Teachers’ Alliance (GTA), a group of several teachers’ unions including the Punjab Teachers’ Union (PTU).

The alliance had been threatening to hold demonstrations since the past few months and began their province-wide protest yesterday which is expected to continue till the end of the year.

Speaking to protesters, GTA’s chief said the government had already agreed to their demands; however, they said the SED failed to implement any of them.

“We have been protesting for the past two years and our just demands have been ignored. Whenever we take to the streets, the government makes promises for consolations and then forgets everything,” he said.

Speaking about the situation of education governance in the province, the protesters claimed the teachers were being punished for policy failures of the government. They said several teachers had been transferred to far-flung areas of the province, while thousands had been denied their due promotions. “The government is outsourcing education on the pretext of performance. The government should itself take responsibility instead of penalizing teachers.”

The teachers alleged that the schools were being privatised through the Punjab Education Foundation (PEF) and well-performing middle and secondary schools were being handed over to the Daanish School System. They said similar failed experiments had been done previously by the government and alleged that corruption in the Daanish School System was well-known.

They said in Punjab matriculate clerks were hired on basic pay scale (BPS-17), while teachers with Masters’ and MPhil’s were hired on BPS-9. They said on several occasions, the government had promised to upgrade the working scale of teachers; however, no implementation had taken place in the past two years.

They announced that teachers hold demonstrations all over the province on a divisional level from November 10, while in December, teachers from all over Punjab would organise a march and sit-in in front of the Punjab Assembly.

Published in The Express Tribune, November 1^st , 2016.