Indefinite strike: Professors to boycott classes daily

‘Government warned many times’.

LAHORE:

The Punjab Professors and Lecturers Association (PPLA) decided on Thursday to go on strike indefinitely in protest at the Punjab government’s indifference towards them.

Teachers from government colleges in Kasur, Sialkot, Shakargarh, Sheikhupura, Multan, Bahawalnagar, Faisalabad, Chishtian and Gujranwala participated.

Protesters walked from Nasser Bagh to the Civil Secretariat, where they staged a sit-in and chanted slogans against the government. The protest lasted more than three hours.

Wearing black armbands, the protesters chanted slogans against Chief Minister Shahbaz Sharif and Education Minister Mian Mujtaba Shujaur Rehman for not fulfilling their promises.

The sit-in brought traffic to a halt. The Mall, Davis Road, McLeod Road, Shahrae Fatima Jinnah and other connecting roads were blocked for several hours, creating problems for commuters. Nasir Zahid Sheikh, the association president, said that more than 4,000 teachers from 400 colleges across the Punjab will take part in the protest. Professors will boycott classes everyday at 11am, he said.

The teachers announced to boycott the PML-N in next elections and vowed not to allow bogus voting while performing election duties in the province.

Sheikh said that the government had been given several deadlines to agree to their demands – making contract staff permanent, being given a PhD allowance at par with university teachers and a new service structure – most recently December 19. However, the government had asked for more time to reconsider the demands, he said, which the association had given them. “Now it’s almost a month after the deadline. That is why we have been forced to take to the streets,” the association president said.

Sheikh said that though their demand regarding regularisation of contract staff had been accepted, the government was reluctant to accept the service structure proposed by the PPLA. MNA Shaista Malik had contacted the PPLA, Sheikh told The Express Tribune, “ [but] we will not stop protesting until the government formally announces that it has accepted our demands.”

“It is shameful that the government has looters and plunderers among its ranks, but teachers were forced to protest on the streets for their rights,” the association vice president Ishaq Azhar Goraya said. He said that according to the chief minister the Finance secretary was the one “creating hurdles” in the acceptance of the lecturers’ demands. “The CM should immediately step down, if he is so weak that he can’t even get his [own] orders implemented,” he added.

Published in The Express Tribune, January 13^th, 2012.