Members of the Punjab Teachers Union (PTU) held up traffic at Faisal Chowk on The Mall for over an hour on Saturday in a protest for higher pay.
Some two hundred teachers marched from Nasser Bagh to Faisal Chowk and then stood on the road chanting slogans denouncing the provincial and federal governments.
Allah Rakha Gujjar, chief organiser of the PTU, said the government needed to double teachers’ pay. Currently, primary school teachers get paid Rs8,000-9,000 a month, middle school teachers get Rs13,000-14,000 and secondary school teachers get Rs16,000-17,000, Gujjar said.
“Our demands are legitimate. Our salaries don’t even last ten days,” he said. “We have to give students tuition in academies to get extra income to make ends meet.”
He accused the Punjab government of giving false hope to teachers who had been protesting for pay rises on May 14.
He said that an official at the Chief Minister’s Secretariat named Shahnawaz had promised them that that Punjab government would take up the matter of their pay with the federal government, but nothing had been done.
“At least they can give us time-scale promotions like to teachers in Balochistan and Islamabad,” Gujjar said, referring to the Punjab government.
He said that the union’s next step was a protest in Islamabad on May 25
Teacher Muhammad Azeem said that many teachers had to take up a second job to make ends meet. “I get paid Rs10,000 a month and its not enough for me and my family,” he said.
The Punjab faces a growing economic crisis as more and more public servants are demanding pay rises in view of years of rapid inflation, while revenue growth fails to keep pace. Public sector doctors were recently rewarded with better pay after they went on strike for over a month.
Published in The Express Tribune, May 22nd, 2011.
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