Daily Times

ISLAMABAD: The Senate Standing Committee on the Cabinet Secretariat has expressed its strong displeasure over continuous ignorance of its directions regarding regularisation of daily wages teaching and non-teaching staff on Wednesday and decided to take up the matter in the Upper House of Parliament.

A long delayed matter regarding the regularisation of daily wages staff members of the Federal Directorate of Education (FDE) once again became the agenda of Senator Talha Mehmood-led committee in the Senate of Pakistan.

Currently, the FDE, overseen by the CADD, has more than 1,000 daily-wage staff members, both teaching and non-teaching, at its educational institutions in the capital. They’ve been employed by the FDE for around eight years, but they are still waiting for their regularisation.

The Islamabad High Court and a special committee formed to settle the matter has already recommended the Ministry of CADD to regularise the services of daily wages staff members as per the recommendations of a committee formed under the chairmanship of Syed Kursheed Shah.

Instead of regularising the daily wages staff, the Ministry of Capital Administration and Development Division (CADD) is going to make fresh appointments against the vacant posts as an advertisement regarding non-teaching staff has already appeared in the media; whereas, the advertisement to seek applications for teaching posts is expected to be published on the coming Sunday.

The committee members strongly criticised the decision of the government on launching a process to make fresh appointments and showed their strong displeasure over the continuous ignorance of directions issued time to time in this case.

The members of the committee walked out from the committee proceedings to show solidarity with daily wages staff, which later on ended at the request of Senator Kalsoom Perveen. They were of the view that the authorities cannot make a discrimination with daily wages teachers by appointing new teachers as they are serving for the last eight to ten years on the same posts.

Senator Kamal Ali Agha has said that the incumbent government is looking unwilling to give due wattage to the parliament as the behaviour of concerned ministry is fraudulent and against the directions of this parliamentary committee.

Senator Shai Syed, while showing his anger on the issue, advised the committee members; “We should leave the remaining agenda here and should go to the Chairman Senate to take him on board in this matter.” He said further; “our directions are being neglected by the CADD Ministry, which is quite unfortunate.” He said; “we will stand with the teachers’ community and we will take all possible steps for their rights.”

The Chairman Committee, Senator Talha Mehmood, while responding on the issue said; “the malafide intentions of the concerned ministry can clearly be seen as the existing teaching staff could not be accommodated as per the published advertisement of FDE.”

A female teacher while crying said; “the FDE is ignoring our services and we are deprived from of our salaries as the government did not allocate an amount for our salaries in the budget 2016-17.

However, the Committee has decided to take up the issue on the floor of the Senate and showed its strong reaction over the decision to make fresh appointments by the Ministry of CADD.

Earlier, these daily wages staff members had also organised a day-long protest in front of the parliament house for their rights, but they have still failed to receive their rights.