Daily Times

ISLAMABAD: The daily wage employees of the Federal Directorate of Education are protesting again on Tuesday but in vain. They gathered in front of the directorate to press for their demands.

There are over 2,000 teaching and non-teaching staff members serving in various educational institutions of the FDE across the capital. These 422 educational institutions are functioning under the supervision of the FDE.

The protesters have mainly three demands as they should be given the contracts, or increase in their salaries which should be tantamount to the contract employees working in the directorate, or till their contractual appointments they should be paid equal to the College Teaching Interns (CTI) of Punjab. The Punjab government is paying Rs 30,000 per month to each CTI teacher serving in this respect.

The FDE employees had also staged many protests to press for their demands. But their issue still lingers.

According to a protesting teacher, all the aggrieved staff members boycotted the classes in their respective institutions and they would continue this till the acceptance of their demands. At the end of the most recent staged protest on October 17, they had been promised from the Capital Administration and Development Division (CAD&D) Mminister Tariq Fazal Chaudhry for just payments of their pending salaries. He told them that the rest of their demands would be forwarded to the high-ups.

However, the protesters were not satisfied over the commitments made by the minister. They came on the road once again to press for their other three demands as well.

On the other hand, the Director Colleges, Tariq Masood, said that they (protesters) should wait for some days as their pending salaries bills had been submitted to the Accountant General of Pakistan Revenues (AGPR) for his final approval. “All know that a lot of time is required in the finalising of this process”, Masood added. As far as their other demands were concerned, he claimed, the proposal draft had been sent to Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif for his review.

Earlier, this issue was also taken up in the standing committees and various courts. Recently a Senate Standing Committee on the Cabinet Secretariat also expressed its strong displeasure over this matter.

Instead of regularising the daily wages staff, the CA&DD and the FDE were going to make fresh appointments against the vacant posts as an advertisement regarding the non-teaching staff appeared in the press that was challenged in the Islamabad High Court (IHC) wherein the IHC forbid the FDE from fresh recruitments. Despite the court’s stay orders, the FDE once again published the advertisement in the press to seek applications for non-teaching staff. The said advertisement against vacant posts was once again challenged in the same court.

The intention of fresh appointments was also criticised by the said committee’s participants. They were of the view that the authorities could not make a discrimination with daily wage teachers by appointing new teachers as they were serving for the last eight to 10 years on the same posts.

During the protest, the Islamabad Capital Police arrested some protesting officials including Ihsan Bangash, a lecturer at the Islamabad Model College for Boys (IMCB) F-8/4, Rizwan Bukhari, a lecturer at the IMCB F-11/3 as well as Saqib and Haneef Akram, serving at the IMCB F-7/3.

The SHO Karachi Company, G-9 Markaz Police Station told Daily Times that the police even protected the protesters till they were in front of the directorate. When they moved toward the Kashmir Highway, the police was compelled to disperse them as this would have caused public suffering, Ali claimed. “They actually are being backed by the Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf (PTI) leaders and the teachers/government officials should not act like politicians because they belonged to a very respective profession,” he maintained.