PA panel orders recruitment of teachers

Committee chairman orders salaries of community schoolteachers be brought to minimum-wage level

PESHAWAR:

Khyber-Pakhtunkhwa Assembly's Standing Committee on Primary and Secondary Education has ordered immediate recruitment of schoolteachers to overcome shortage of teaching staff in the schools.

An important meeting of the committee was held which was chaired by Standing Committee Chairman Taj Muhammad Khan Tarand.

Tarand directed the authorities to take steps to bring the salaries of community schoolteachers up to the minimum-wage level.

Provincial Education Minister Faisal Khan Tarakai, members of the provincial assembly (MPAs) Abdul Salam Afridi, Mian Sharafat Ali, Arif Ahmed Zai, Adnan Khan and Subia Shahid, and Education Department Special Secretary Qaiser Alam, Additional Secretary Maqbool Khan, Director Education Samina Altaf, Director DPD Muhammad Mutahir and other senior officials of the Education Department participated.

The committee was informed that the main purpose of appointing school leaders was to ensure quality education and their problems would be resolved on a priority basis.

Tarakai told the committee that it had been decided to extend the contracts of school leaders and they were not being given any other work except quality education monitoring. Instructions had been issued to the department to submit suggestions for their better future, he added.

Regarding transfers of ministerial staff, the committee was informed that a period of one-and-a-half years had been fixed. Employees who have completed that period at a station would be transferred immediately. Initially, these transfers would be made in three districts and soon the ministerial staff of all the districts would be transferred.

In response to a question, the minister said that a scholarship programme had been started for improvement in education in the districts where the literacy rate was low, especially the merged districts, so that maximum number of students could be enrolled.

Regarding the ALP programme, the education minister said that this programme was being extended to other districts of the province and a strategy had been chalked out to bring these students into the mainstream and conduct their examinations.

The committee chairman said that the ALP was an excellent programme and the shortcomings and problems existing in it should be removed immediately before its expansion.

Tarand directed the education officials to immediately seek approval from the Finance Department for the posts in schools that were nearing completion so that the work was not delayed.

MPAs Arif Ahmad Zai and Mian Sharafat Ali informed the committee about the delay in the construction of schools in Charsadda and Swat and other issues. Special Secretary Education Qaiser Alam was tasked to address those issues.