Around 248 teachers of Information Technology education, staged a protest demonstration in the premises of Banigala for an indefinite period of time against the unfulfilled promises made by Prime Minister Imran Khan, former chief minister Pervez Khattak and former education minister Atif Khan.
According to the official documents, 170 laboratories were established for the government high and government higher secondary schools across the province for which 248 teachers were recruited on contract basis through the National Testing Service test. For IT education, around 50,000 students were enrolled in different schools across the province to encourage special IT education. The contracts of teachers were renewed four times by June 2017 to facilitate education by the department of Elementary & Secondary Education of Khyber-Pakhtunkhwa government led by Pakistan Tehreek-i-Insaf.
The documents revealed that the teacher’s last contract expired on June 30, 2018.
By the end of 2017, the teachers staged a demonstration in front of Banigala where PM Imran Khan and then chief and education minister officially informed the departments to convert contract base teachers on ad hoc basis as soon as possible. The KP ESE Department moved a summary for the conversion of the contract base teachers to ad hoc base but the government excluded the said project from the annual ADP scheme as the establishment department under their recommendation notified that no law exists on the basis of which the contract teachers should be converted to ad hoc base as the ministers in the government are not aware of the provincial laws. Various flaws were found in the official documents as well.
Aarzu, 34, a mother of two children, traveled from Abbottabad for the protest and informed Daily Times that she had left her children at home for this protest. She informed about her hand to mouth conditions.
“I met Imran Khan in 2017 at Banigala where Atif Khan promised that in the next couple of weeks, the said teachers will be made permanent but up until now, nothing has happened of that sort,” she said.
Published in Daily Times, September 29th 2018.