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 the Parliament.

A long delayed matter regarding the regularisation of daily wages staff members of Federal Directorate of Education (FDE) was once again became on the agenda of the Senator Talha Mehmood led committee in 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 CA&DD 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 (CA&DD) 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 the coming Sunday.

The committee members strongly criticised the decision of the government on launching a process to make fresh appointments and showed its strong displeasure over the continuous ignorance of its directions in this case. The members of the committee walked out from the committee proceedings to show solidarity with daily wages staff. They were of the view that the authorities could not discriminate against daily wages teachers by appointing new teachers, because they had been serving for nearly a decade 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 angrily advised the committee members to “leave the remaining agenda here and go to the Chairman Senate to take him on board in this matter. Our directions are being neglected by CA&DD Ministry, which is a quite unfortunate. We will stand with the teacher community and take all possible steps for their rights.”

The Chairmen Committee, Senator Talha Mehmood said “the mala fide intention 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 broke down as she accused the FDE of “ignoring our services and withholding our salaries.”

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

Earlier, these daily wages staff members had also organised a protest in front of Parliament House for their rights, but they are still failed to receive their rights so far.

It is pertinent to mention here that some other government department has already regularised their daily wages employees under the directions of Syed Kursheed Shah’s committee, but these daily wages workers are still waiting for the same favour.