Unpaid daily-wage staffers set to boycott exams

Regular teachers fear they may be co-opted into examination duties

ISLAMABAD: With thousands of daily-wage teachers and other staffers in the capital’s schools still on strike owing to non-payment of their salaries for over eight months, the fate of final exams at public schools across the city hangs in the balance.

The centralised exams of Class V are scheduled to commence from February 7, with thousands of students set to appear in the first critical exam in a students’ academic career. However, over 2,000 daily-wage teachers have refused to perform invigilation duties or to check and mark the papers.

Later, exams for Class VI, VII, VIII are scheduled to commence from February 17.

The matter has come to head because, as per reports, the finance ministry has refused to release supplementary grants to pay the salaries of teachers.

Around 2,200 daily wage employees of the capital’s government-run schools have been working without pay since May 2017. The issue of their regularisation has also been pending for years.

Various parliamentary panels have taken up the issue, with litigation also pending but little has been done to resolve their grievances.

Non-payment of their salaries forced the teachers to launch a protest on January 9 outside the press club and the offices of the Federal Directorate of Education (FDE).

Last week on January 23, they protested outside the accountability court and tried to intercept the convoy of former prime minister Nawaz Sharif and his daughter Maryam Nawaz who were appearing in the court for the Panama Papers case.

Bereft of his parliamentary seat, Nawaz paid little heed to their cries.

“All the regular staff would be coerced into performing examination duties if the [daily-wage] teachers do not end their strike. Since all junior sections are being taught by female teachers, they are easily coerced into performing additional duties,” said a teacher of Islamabad College of Boys in Sector G-6/3, adding that regular staffers fear to be laden with the additional the burden of exam duties.

 

Published in The Express Tribune, January 29^th, 2018.