Police baton charge schoolteachers

Police on Thursday baton charged and used tear gas against primary schoolteachers who staged a large protest demonstration against what they called the government’s “delaying tactics” in upgrading their pay scales in Peshawar.

Around 50 of them were rounded up after clashes erupted between police and protestors which also left six policemen injured. The injured policemen were rushed to the nearby Lady Reading Hospital (LRH).

Teachers said that more than a dozen teachers had also been injured in the police baton-charge.

Thousands of primary schoolsteachers from across the province assembled outside the provincial assembly building on Khyber Road and demanded their upgradation from BPS-14, 15, 16 and 17 and increase in allowances.

They were holding placards and banners and said that the PTI government had promised a change but failed to address their problems despite repeated assurances in the past three years.

The speakers said delay in pay scale upgradation was creating disparity among teachers and demanded of PTI Chairman Imran Khan, Chief Minister K-P Mahmood Khan and Education Minister Atif Khan to address their problems on priority basis.

Things turned violent when police tried to disperse them to open the road for traffic as teachers started stoning police deployed there. Several DSNGs of private TV channels were also attacked by the protesters.

Published in The Express Tribune, October 7^th, 2022.