Large number of teachers on protest, threat boycott of classes, exams

KARACHI: Thousands of government secondary schools teachers from all over the province including a good number of female teachers, gathered here at Karachi Press Club on Thursday to raise their voice for acceptance of their demands, have gone to sit-in outside KPC after failure of their talks with the Sindh Secretary Education and the Commissioner Karachi.

Being frustrated on the alleged poor response from Sindh Government and the concerned Education Department authorities, the protesting teachers in the afternoon tried to march towards the Chief Minister House to press for their demands' acceptance. But, the police stopped them by using tear gas and by baton charging.

Many teachers male and female were injured and some officials of Government Secondary Teachers Association were also arrested. GSTA has launched this province-wise campaign for the acceptance of their long-standing various demands.

Their demands included regularization of teachers qualifying the tests held through IBA, NTS and Iqra University; promotions of HST and SLT teachers; issuance of salaries to the teaching and non-teaching staff appointed in 2012 and 2013; upgrading of  JST to time scale 17 and HST teachers to time scale 20;  promotions of Secondary Head Masters/Mistresses in Karachi to next grade who had already completed the required trainings and were waiting for their promotions for long.

The teachers strongly rejected the induction of new management cadre as TEOs, DDEOs, DEOs and Director Schools as these posts were meant for upgradation of teachers. They maintained that only 12 of these posts was left for teachers to be appointed. According to them, a Town Education Officer from management cadre was getting Rs 75,000 in addition to the salary, Deputy District Education Officer Rs 100,000 extra and DEO Rs 150,000 and Director Rs 200,000 extra as most of them have additional charges of these posts.

The GSTA leadership have announced boycott of classes throughout Sindh from Friday (March 29) till their demands are accepted in toto and the notifications are issued. Also, they have announced to stay away from the entire process of ninth and tenth annual exams-2019 scheduled to begin from 1st April.

Meanwhile, Sindh Secretary Education Qazi Shahid Pervez have come up with statement in media that teachers' demands were under consideration and a part of these were already accepted.

He was of the opinion that the teachers’ protest at this time was aimed to disrupt the matric exams, and that the government would not tolerate the same.

Sindh Chief Minister Syed Murad Ali Shah, taking notice of the use of force against the protesting teachers, has directed Commissioner Karachi Iftikhar Ahmed Shalwani and Additional IG Police (Karachi) Dr. Ameer Shaikh to submit a report about the use of tear gar and baton charging.

He regretted that it was the legitimate right of the teachers to peacefully protest for the acceptance of their demands.

"Pur amn ihtejaj, un ka haq hey," Shah said.