Teachers threaten to stage sit-in if demands not met

PTU extends support for college professors demanding pay protection, promotions.

LAHORE: Schoolteachers in Punjab have announced their support for the Punjab Professors and Lecturers Association (PPLA) as well as the possibility of joining them in protest against the provincial government, if their demands were not met.

In a statement after an executive committee meeting on Sunday, the Punjab Teachers Union (PTU) extended support for the college professors and lecturers, who staged a protest and a sit-in on December 20 demanding pay protection, timescale and pending promotions of college teachers.

The PTU leadership, in the statement, said that the provincial government should immediately accept their demands otherwise PTU would, at every level, support and participate in their protests.

The schoolteachers also discussed their demands and agreed to start a movement, especially for the restoration of teachers’ package, in the new year. The PTU members agreed to start their movement in February 2018.

Their demands included restoration of teachers’ package, delays in in-service promotions, 1,300 empty slots of head teachers/principals, delays in promotion of grade 17 to 20 officials, punishing teachers for not achieving enrollment and literacy and numeracy test targets, ban on leaves, delays in regularisation of teachers as well as delays in pays of newly-recruited teachers.

The PTU leadership, including Central President Chaudhry Muhammad Sarfaraz, Syed Sajjad Akbar Kazmi, Rana Liaquat Ali and Jam Sadiq in the statement also lauded the struggle of teachers and said that start of scale up-gradation of teachers from January 2018 was the result of PTU’s three-year struggle.

They said that PTU would send a memorandum of demands to the Punjab chief minister, school education minister, chief secretary and school education department secretary.

The PTU statement also censured the establishment of District Education Authorities (DEAs) and claimed that the education system was badly affected by this system. They also said that teachers inducted in 2009 were still working on contractual basis and were not yet regularised. The PTU was also critical of some aspects of the teachers’ training programme under the provincial government.

Published in The Express Tribune, January 1^st, 2018.