KP teachers threaten to boycott election duties in future

PESHAWAR: Demanding the Shaheed Package for the two schoolteachers who died in the line of duty in the recently held local government elections, the All Primary Teachers Association (APTA), Khyber Pakhtunkhwa president Malik Khalid Khan, has declared to boycott the election duties in future.
“Primary teachers won’t perform election duties, be it general election, local bodies or by-polls. The APTA holds district administration and Elementary and Secondary Education Department responsible for the on duty death of our two colleagues,” he said while addressing a condolence reference held for the deceased teachers on Sunday.
Relatives of the deceased teachers were also present. It may be recalled that a woman primary schoolteacher, Shabana Shaheen, was killed after being hit by a stray bullet in the head. She was going home after performing duty as assistant presiding officer at a polling station in Peshawar.
The teacher had to hire an auto-rickshaw to reach home as election staff did not provide her conveyance to drop her at home. Likewise, a senior English teacher, Khalid Khan, died of cardiac arrest due to suffocation at the polling station.
“At polling stations our teachers, including females, were manhandled and tortured by activists of certain political parties,” he said, adding that teachers were not given transport facility. He added that nobody at the Education Department bothered to acknowledge the services of deceased teachers. “Instead, administration of certain districts has prepared a list of 352 teachers seeking legal action against them for negligence in election duty,” he said.
Malik Khalid said women teachers were deputed in far-flung areas without having any consultation with the APTA, which is the sole representative body of the primary teachers of Khyber Pakhtunkhwa. He also came hard on the federal government for announcing 7.5per cent raise for government employees. The teachers representative urged the Khyber Pakhtunkhwa government to raise the salary of the government employees. “Salary raise less than 20 per cent is not acceptable to us,” he declared.
He said the KP government should increase the education budget besides giving one-step promotion to the teachers. “If government continued subjecting us to step-motherly treatment, we would be left with no other option but to launch a full-fledged protest in September,” he warned.
He asked the provincial government to come clear on Education Employees Foundation. “About 150,000 teachers contribute Rs100 rupees to the EEF monthly, but nobody knows where these funds are disbursed because teacher community has no representation in it,” he said. District representatives of the APTA also spoke on the occasion.