Unfulfilled promises: Teachers protest against govt withdrawal of past increments

Threaten to stage protest in Lahore next week

RAWALPINDI: College lecturers, professors and students staged rallies in Rawalpindi on Tuesday to protest against the government’s plan to recover the increments which had been paid to teachers after they had been regularised.

They also threatened to hold a massive rally in Lahore next week unless demands are met.

A large number of male college teachers gathered at the Asghar Mall Boys Degree College at about 11am before marching towards Saidpur Road.

Led by Punjab Professors and Lecturers Association (PPLA) President Abdul Khaliq Naddeem and Rawalpindi Division President Liaquat Abbasi, the protesters chanted slogans against what they termed the callousness of Punjab’s education department before dispersing.  A similar protest demonstration was held at the Government Degree College for Women in Satellite Town near Sixth Road. Teachers of the college also chanted slogans against policies of the education department.

Talking to The Express Tribune, Professor Abbasi explained that the government had hired teachers on contractual basis through the Punjab Public Service Commission in four batches in 2002, 2005, 2009, and in 2012. The government had regularised these teachers in 2009, 2010, 2012, and 2015 respectively.

After regularising them, the government protected the pay scales of the first two batches who continued to receive annual increments as per their contracts even after regularisation. The government, however, did not offer this protection to the third and fourth batches after their regularisation.

Last year, Abbasi said, the government had decided to withdraw pay protection from contract teachers which had been regularised in 2009 and 2010 as well. Now, he claimed, the government had decided to recover the increments paid to them as per their contracts after their regularisation.

The PPLA official said that last year the body had held a meeting with Punjab’s secretary of higher education commission where they agreed that the secretary would send a summary to the chief minister for not recovering the salaries already paid to the teachers and reinstate their pay protection.

Abbasi claimed that the secretary did not send the summary. Their second demand, the PPLA divisional president said was one grade promotion to all college teachers as announced by former prime minister Shaukat Aziz in 2007. Further, the teachers demanded state-of-the-art facilities for college teachers to conduct research.

Fourth, the teachers said that the government should give more powers to divisional directorates of colleges. Fifth, the PPLA demanded transparent and proper criteria for hiring of college teachers. Lastly, Abbasi said that it was not possible for teachers living far away from the colleges to reach their respective institutions by the government-set deadline of 8:15 am.

In a statement, the college teachers said that if the government did not pay heed to their demands, they would hold a massive protest rally in Lahore on December 14 when teachers across Punjab would take part in the rally.

When contacted, Rawalpindi Colleges Director Malik Muhammad Asghar said that he did not know about the protest rallies and hence was not in a position to comment.

Published in The Express Tribune, December 7^th, 2016.