K-P seeks time-based promotions for teachers

Officials say move will add to its wage bill, prompt other employees to demand it

PESHAWAR: Taking a page out of the playbook of its political rivals, the provincial government is trying to gratify thousands of teachers by approving time-based promotions which will in turn further inflate the education department’s wage bill and divide government employees.

To ‘win over’ 176,000 schools teachers spread across the province, the Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf (PTI)-led Khyber-Pakhtunkhwa (K-P) government is in the process of amending the K-P Appointment, Deputation, Posting and Transfer of Teachers, Lecturers, Instructors and Doctors Regulatory Act 2011, to give them time-based promotions. If the move goes through, teachers would become the only government employees in the province to get such a promotion.

A draft bill to amend the act has already been prepared by the K-P Elementary and Secondary Education Department (E&SED) and has been sent to the law department for vetting. It is expected to be ready for presentation before the provincial cabinet at its next meeting scheduled to be held on Monday.



If approved, it would balloon non-development expenditure on education by Rs8 billion per annum — a far cry from what citizens had asked for in a recent government survey on sectors which require more funds.

Bill

The bill to amend the K-P Appointment, Deputation, Posting and Transfer of Teachers, Lecturers, Instructors and Doctors Regulatory Act 2011, seeks to give school teachers across the province school-based status along with a time-scale which would dictate when their promotion to the next basic pay scale is due. The maximum period for a teacher to be promoted from one grade to another will be eight years, said a senior official close to the matter.

“The teacher will get promoted after a certain time, irrespective of available vacancies. Moreover, once appointed, a teacher can remain in their assigned school until retirement.

A teacher can only be transferred to another school in exceptional cases such as disability, wedlock, the teacher developing enmity in the school’s locality, school’s merger with another or in the event of rationalization —where the number of teachers exceed the number prescribed teacher-student ratio — then the department can transfer some of the teachers to another school,” the official explained.

Controversy

While the bill is owned by the K-P Establishment Department, the draft has been prepared by the E&SED.

As a result, the K-P law department has refused from vetting it.

“Officials at the law department have returned the draft stating that the Establishment Department owns the law, hence they should send the draft bill for vetting,” said another official.The K-P Establishment Department is, however, has opposed the amendments since it will open the floodgates for all other government officials to start demanding time-scale promotions regardless of vacancies.



Moreover, the law department is also apparently against the bill, officials suggested. However, it has failed to sway the chief minister who is keen on having the bill passed as quickly as possible.

One evidence of this was when K-P Chief Minister Pervez Khattak expelled an additional secretary and a deputy secretary of the establishment department from a meeting at the Chief Minister House on Wednesday while voicing frustration at their reluctance, explained another official with knowledge of that meeting. A senior official who had attended the meeting had confirmed the expulsion.

Surprisingly, the K-P finance department — which has historically opposed such decisions owing to their immense financial implications—have agreed with the chief minister’s plan.

Path to bankruptcy?

The E&SE department has a total 176,000 teachers across the province who stand to benefit from the amendment.

At the moment, a large chunk of E&SED’s annual budget of Rs136 billion (FY 2017-18) is spent on non-development expenditure including salaries of teachers and other bills such as those for power and water. Should the bill become a law, the time-scale promotions would add a burden of Rs8 billion to the provincial exchequer in the upcoming fiscal year.

“Three departments: the police, E&SED and health will drive this province to bankruptcy in the near future due to their large human resource roster and salaries,” complained an official as he sounded an ominous warning. He added that morally and ethically an outgoing government shall not take such decisions which would have major financial implications.

“You should first look into the performance of the teachers. Time-scale promotion has not been implemented in any department thus far. If teachers were given time-scales, the entire province—all government employees — would start demanding it. Doctors, who are dealt under the same act, will be among the first to demand time-scale promotions.”

Meanwhile, E&SED Special Secretary Arshad Khan refused to comment on the issue, noting that “the bill belongs to the establishment department so they were in better position to answer.”

Establishment Department Special Secretary Syeda Tanzeela Sabahat, though, referred to the department’s Additional Secretary Ali Qadar Safi who said they “work under rules of business and we put our observations on summaries. But the cabinet is the decision-making body.” 

Published in The Express Tribune, March 16^th, 2018.