Punjab’s educators want contract workers regularised

Say inflation has skyrocketed in the past couple of years

RAWALPINDI: Teachers in Punjab have called on the provincial government to regularise contractual workers and fill vacant seats as their umbrella body presented a charter of demands.

Punjab Educators Foundation (PEF) President Malik Amjad Mehmood, General Secretary Abdul Razzaq, and district officials, while speaking during an Express Forum, organised to highlight the problems faced by the teaching staff employed by the government in Punjab, demanded that the government announce a significant increase in their allowances.

Explaining the reasons behind their demand, Mehmood said that inflation has skyrocketed over the past couple of years. As a result, their current level of the allowance was insufficient to meet their needs.

The PEF president further said that the money provided currently as house allowance was a joke, adding that rent has gone up several times and that they have to pay from their pocket to make up the difference between the rent and their allowance. This he, said, was eating into their disposable income.

He suggested that the house allowance should be revised and should be raised to around 50 per cent of their salaries. Besides this, the teachers urged the government to increase the conveyance and medical allowance of teachers.

PEF officials said that the government had slammed the brakes on regularizing the services of educators under the pretext of a nation-wide lockdown, imposed to curb the spread of the novel coronavirus (Covid-19). They contended that other operations including promotion, transfer, postings, and other departmental works are underway.

Published in The Express Tribune, May 27^th, 2020.