Professors warn of sit-in outside K-P assembly

Urge govt to upgrade their grade, provide special allowance and regularise ad hoc lecturers

PESHAWAR: A body of lecturers and professors in Khyber-Pakhtunkhwa (K-P) on Thursday threatened to stage a sit-in outside the provincial assembly next week unless their demands are met.

A large number of teachers gathered outside Peshawar Press Club on Thursday. While holding banners aloft, they chanted slogans against the provincial government.

K-P Professors and Lectures Action Committee (KPPLAC)President Professor Yar Muhammad Toofan said that they wanted grade upgrades, special allowances and regularisation of ad hoc lecturers.

He said that the government had promised to accept their demands and will provide them with professional allowances which are provided to other government employees.

But now, he said, the government was not even willing to talk to them.

Toofan added that before Ramazan began, they had staged a similar protest outside the Peshawar Press Club. He claimed that the advisor to K-P chief minister on higher education and Senior Health Minister Shah Farman had visited their protest camp where they promised to fulfil all their demands but these officials have not been in contact since.

He said that a number of teachers who had been appointed on Basic Pay Scale-17 are expected to retire in the same grade.

The KPPLAC chief further claimed that if the government can provide professional allowances and upgrade doctors and other employees, why can the government not upgrade professors and lecturers who play a key role in the construction of positive societies.

“The government does not take our issue seriously which is why we are forced to protest against it,” Toofan explained.

The KPPLAC official said that they were currently planning the next step in the event the government continues to ignore their demands.

He added that on June 6 they will stage a sit-in outside the K-P Assembly till their demands are fulfilled. On the other hand, their final course of action would be to shut down all colleges across the province and stage a sit-in outside the ruling Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf (PTI) Chairman Imran Khan’s residence in Bani Gala, Islamabad.

Published in The Express Tribune, June 2^nd, 2017.