Unpaid for nine months: Daily wagers block road outside FDE

Demand regularisation, immediate release of salaries

ISLAMABAD: Teaching and non-teaching staff of capital’s public educational institutions working on daily wages blocked the main road in front of the capital’s education department for two hours to demand the release of their salary.

The daily wage staffers have not been paid for the past nine months and have been boycotting their duties for 55 days.

Dozens of teaching staffers working on daily wage basis in schools and colleges of the capital gathered outside the Federal Directorate of Education (FDE), their parent department, on Rothas Road in Sector G-9.

Around 2,200 daily wage employees of the capital’s government-run schools have been working without pay since May 2017.  Apart from salaries, the teachers have been demanding regularisation of their services.

The Capital Administration and Development Division (CADD), though, say that their parent department — the FDE — would regularise them in basic pay scale grades one through 15. Employees in grades 16-17 and above would have to go through a process set by the Federal Public Service Commission (FPSC).

However, the employees argue that the government has already regularised them through a committee formed by the last Pakistan People Party government which regularised thousands of employees of various ministries. Moreover, the incumbent government also regularised around 11,000 employees following recommendations of the same committee.

Earlier, the employees had been protesting in front of National Press Club and National Accountability Court, hoping that the large media presence would also eventually turn its direction them.

They also tried to stop the convoy of the former premier Nawaz Sharif to catch his attention and staged a sit-in for two nights on the roads but their every move seems to be falling on deaf ears as the powers that be remain indifferent with no initiative.

Published in The Express Tribune, February 27^th, 2018.