K-P abandons ‘Teachers Day’ tradition

The Khyber-Pakhtunkhwa (K-P) government has almost abandoned the tradition of officially celebrating the Teachers Day on October 5 in the province for the past three years.

This year too was no exception as neither the provincial government nor the Elementary and Secondary Education Department or the Higher Education Department bothered to officially celebrate it.

The Teachers Day tradition, however, was kept alive by social media users who posted the pictures of their teachers on Facebook and Twitter.

The provincial president of All Primary Teachers Association (APTA) Azizullah expressed his anger and sorrow over the situation and said that there was no respect in our society for the teachers.

“People don’t value their teachers because they don’t value education at all. This is unfortunate because without education you cannot make a great nation,” he said.

“The most unfortunate thing is that even government is not interested in it,” he added.

It is worth mentioning here that in the past the provincial government used to give advertisements to the newspapers especially for the day and a main function was held at PC Hotel in Peshawar in which Chief Minister used to be the chief guest but in 2018 the event was organized officially for the last time. In 2019, it was organized at the directorate level only without any main function at a hotel and after that the tradition was dropped altogether.

Pervaz Musharraf was the man who introduced the official celebrations of Teachers Day in Pakistan back in 2002 and the example was followed by the provinces too.

A spokesperson for Education Minister Shahram Tarakai, when contacted, said that the Teachers Day was not organized on official level due to Covid-19 pandemic. He claimed that this was the sole reason and the day had not been forgotten altogether by the officials and government.

The critics, however, claim that despite the Covid-19 large functions were organized at expensive hotels for the matric and intermediate exams position holders recently which were attended by the minister himself despite the epidemic.

Published in The Express Tribune, October 7^th, 2021.