Interns to make up for college teachers’ shortage

Representatives of teachers dismayed over the initiative


Ammar Sheikh October 03, 2017
PHOTO: AFP

LAHORE: The Punjab government has initiated a College Teaching Interns (CTI) programme to compensate the lack of staff in colleges across Punjab.

Teachers, however, believe the initiative will not be as useful as it
was launched too late into the academic year. According to the initiative, the college head will produce a report of staff shortage in their respective colleges. Consequently, interns would be hired after walk-in interview.

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Interns will be positioned as per the demand of teaching staff in the colleges. The duration of the internship would be six months and each intern will be paid Rs30,000 per month.

According to the rules of hiring interns by the Punjab Higher Education Department (HED), the interns would be temporarily hired for an academic session or until he or she was replaced by a full-time appointee.

According to the terms of contract, the placement of the intern was deemed temporary and could be terminated by the Selection Committee at any time if it considered the performances as unsatisfactory.

Punjab Professors and Lecturers Association (PPLA) and college teachers’ representative bodies expressed their dismay over the initiative. Talking to The Express Tribune, PPLA President Hafiz Khaliq Nadeem said that the teaching body had been demanding that all vacant teaching positions should be filled, but the government had delayed recruiting lecturers. He pointed out that teaching interns were being hired two months after the start of the academic year.

Nadeem said that CTI hiring should have been done before the start of the academic year. He said it was an administrative failure of the HED that it was unable to take necessary measures on time. The PPLA president said the recruitment process would take the month of October only the months of November and December would be left.

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When contacted, Lahore Division Director (Colleges) Zafar Inayat Anjum said the initiative had been taken to fulfill the requirement of teaching staff in colleges and interns would be hired through a walk-in interview which would be conducted by a Selection Committee comprising vice principals and heads of departments.

When asked about the delay in the CITs recruitment process, he refuted claims by teachers and said that CITs were hired in November every year, but this year it was done a month earlier.

Published in The Express Tribune, October 3rd, 2017.

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