Demanding their due: Teaching the government a lesson

PPLA refuses to back down on teachers promotions and salary revision.

MULTAN:

Teaching staff from nearly 50 colleges in the Multan division observed a strike on Friday to press the provincial government to accept their demands regarding salary increases as well as promotions.

The strike was observed on the appeal of the Punjab Professors and Lecturers Association (PPLA).

Multan district officer for colleges Haider Abbas said that he held talks with teachers and had conveyed their demands to the Punjab government on several occasions. He said that some teachers who wanted to perform their duties were now unable to do so because of the PPLA’s pressure. “The matter is being addressed and the government has agreed to re-examine their demands but the belligerence of the PPLA has meant that even the teachers who wanted to accept the negotiations are now resisting,” he said.

When contacted, PPLA general secretary Tanweer Shah said that Chief Minister Shahbaz Sharif had promised on November 4, 2011 that the Punjab government would accept all their demands by December 19 but no order had been issued to address the teachers’ concerns.

“There is all this rhetoric about a ‘parha likha Punjab’ and the chief minister seems to be using this slogan a lot but it is completely without basis.

When teachers aren’t being paid the basic minimum wage and dozens have gone without pay for months the education system can never prosper,” he said.

“The government needs to take the teachers’ promotion seriously and they cannot keep ignoring us,” he added.

Shah said that a teacher joins service in BS-17 through a procedure of examinations and interviews but unlike officials of other departments who reach BS-20 or 21, they retire in BS-18 after getting only one promotion in their career.

He said that no attention was being paid to upgrade science laboratories or provide furniture for colleges. He said that 80 per cent rural area students were getting education in government colleges but these universities had been neglected.

Shah said that the protest would end only when the provincial government announced a time-scale and five-tier promotion formula, confirmation of all contract teachers and establishment of a teachers’ foundation. APP

Published in The Express Tribune, January 15^th, 2012.