K-P govt set to exorcise ghost teachers from schools in ex-Fata

Provincial govt extends jurisdiction of monitoring units to erstwhile FATA and frontier regions

PESHAWAR: The Khyber-Pakhtunkhwa government is set to exorcise ghost teachers in the merged tribal districts. “Action will be taken against ghost teachers in the tribal region,” Adviser to CM on Education Ziaullah Bangash said.

Soon biometric system will be installed in tribal schools to monitor the attendance of teachers and other staff during the school time, he said, announcing extension of the jurisdiction of independent monitoring units (IMU) of education department to the merged districts of erstwhile Fata. IMUs have been operational in K-P since 2014 for monitoring and data collection for all the 28,000 schools in the province.

The education department in this regard has turned down proposal of IMU directorate to hire more people and instead decided to send current staff to the merged districts. Officials said that fresh hiring will be made only if it was absolutely necessary.

Bangash, too did not mention hiring more people when he said that K-P education department has extended the IMUs to erstwhile Fata and notification has been issued from the department on last Thursday.

While talking to the media the adviser said that K-P education minister has extended the IMUs to the seven tribal districts for improving the education standard and presence of teachers and students.

“On the directives of the prime minister and also on the demand of the tribal elders I have extended the IMU to the tribal areas, which enable us to monitor presence of teachers in schools and also make the data of tribal areas’ school available with the education ministry,” Bangash said.

Replying to a question, the adviser said: “During my several visits to the tribal districts, I came to know that teachers don’t come to take classes at schools.”

The IMU will pinpoint such absent teachers he said. Moreover, he said, some teachers taking salaries from the government exchequer were doing business in the settled districts, instead of teaching at their designated schools in the tribal areas.

After the deployment of IMUs, teachers will be accountable to the district education officer and technically bound to perform the duties, Bangash said. The decision was taken in meeting under the chairmanship of the Prime minister Imran Khan on last day of the 2018 and he directed to extend the IMU to the tribal districts.

In the meeting he also directed the IMU project director to carry out all the measures in extension and asked to supervise the process till extension. The extension order not only limited to the tribal districts, but also for the former frontier region of the province.