LAHORE Despite passage of over two years, Punjab Higher Education Department (HED) has failed to finalise terms and conditions of 895 contract employees of Commerce Stream who were transferred to the department from Tevta in July 2012. This has been resulting in frequent delay of salaries to the said teaching and non-teaching staff besides they have been deprived of various allowances including conveyance, medical, house rent and hard area allowance etc over these years. The government’s indifferent attitude and widespread apathy among officials of the Higher Education Department is evident from the fact that these employees have yet to receive salaries for the months of January and February 2015. The depressing situation has now prompted the staff to hold complete boycott at 118 colleges/institutes of commerce across the province as they see the same as “violation of human rights.” A number of employees while talking to The News strongly criticised the HED and provincial ministry of education for their lack of interest and appealed to the chief minster to take notice of the issue and also hold inquiry against those responsible for the delay. They said ever since the employees of Commerce Stream of Technical Education & Vocational Training Authority (Tevta) were transferred to the Higher Education Department in 2012 they had been facing problems especially vis-à-vis salaries and non-payment of allowances. They said it was primarily because of the delay in finalisation of terms and conditions of the employees under the Punjab government’s contract policy these employees were suffering over the years. They also said their representative body, Commerce Professors & Lecturers Association (CPLA), had held meetings were officials of the HED on various occasions especially with the Additional Secretary Silwat Saeed but to no avail. “Every month we have to manage loan to run our kitchen”, said one of the dejected employees. “The bureaucracy is responsible for all this mess but it is unfortunate that no one is ready to take action against it”, he added. Another teacher said: “The Punjab government can spend millions on Horse & Cattle Show but can’t pay the teachers in this period of ever increasing inflation.” An official of the HED, seeking anonymity, said the case with regard to finalisation of terms and conditions of Commerce Stream employees was in process owing to which it was not possible to execute the disbursement of salaries to these contract employees through present arrangement of financial disbursement in the department. He said Tevta would disburse funds for salary of these employees adding in this regard the HED had written a letter to the Finance Department to release funds to Tevta. HED Secretary Muhammad Aslam Kamboh was not available for comments. The News could not reach Punjab Education Minister Rana Mashhood despite repeated attempts on his cellphone. He did not reply a short message sent on his cellphone in this regard. CPLA President Mirza Javed Iqbal, when contacted, said the commerce stream employees had not received salaries for the last two months which was very unfortunate. He said because of the delay, the teaching and non teaching staff was now forced to observe boycott at the commerce institute across Punjab from March 16 (Monday).
