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Appointment of permanent staff to girls college in sight

By Jamila Achakzai
October 07, 2018

Islamabad : The people living in the federal capital’s southern residential neighbourhoods have a good reason to cheer about.

The appointment of permanent staff members, especially teachers, to the only public sector girls’ college in the vast Tarnol area seems to be imminent as the Planning Commission green-lights the PC-IV of the Islamabad Model College for Girls, I-14/3, after a long delay.

The development will be followed by the formal allocation of budget and sanctioning of permanent employees by the finance division for the college, which has been functioning with teachers borrowed from other educational institutions since its formal opening in 2012.

The relevant officials insist that all this will happen in a matter of weeks if things aren’t caught up in bureaucratic red tape. It was in 2002 when the then prime minister, Mir Zafarullah Khan Jamali, ordered the establishment of a college for the girls living in the capital’s vast, remote southern areas, including I-14, I-15, I-16, G-13, G-14 and G-15 sectors, Chungi no. 26, Naseerabad, Awan Town, Shams Colony, Jhangi Syedan and private housing societies in Tarnol area.

At that time, the entire area didn’t have any government girls’ college forcing many local young women from poor families to abandon formal education after matriculation.

There followed the development of the Rs75 million I-14/3 IMCG project and approval by the Central Development Working Party in 2004.

Under the plans, the college building was to be put up within 36 months beginning in July 2004 but the civil work began in 2005 and took seven years to complete.

With 18 classrooms, administration block and library in place, the Federal Directorate of Education, which oversees Islamabad’s public sector schools and colleges, ordered the start of classes in the college up to graduation level in the 2012-13 academic session though the staff members of other educational institutions, especially teachers, were provisionally shifted there.

Currently, the college has enrolled 254 students in intermediate and degree courses but there is no permanent teaching and non-teaching staff member. It has only 12 teachers and seven of them are borrowed from other colleges and three are daily wagers. Even the four nonteaching staff members have been borrowed from other educational institutions.

The college has plans to begin four-year BS programme but the shortage of teachers and space has turned out to be a roadblock.

A few months ago, an evaluation team of the Planning Commission’s Project Wing visited the college to examine classrooms, laboratories, library, main hall, buses, computers, furniture and electrical devices and recommended the creation of 40 teaching and 32 nonteaching posts saying there’s an urgent need for the provision of permanent employees to ensure the sustainable functioning of the college to cater to the needs of the populated Tarnol sector.

Local resident Ishaq Khan Wazir welcomed the approval of the college’s PC-IV and demanded the early appointment of permanent staff members to it. He insisted that before the college’s opening in 2012, local, poor girls used to abandon formal education after completing matriculation and intermediate courses due to the nonexistence of a government college in the area. “When the I-14/3 IMCG began classes, we got very happy to think about our daughters doing graduation but the happiness proved short-lived as the college had fewer teachers and even there was none for many subjects leaving many of our daughters without courses of choice,” he said.

Principal Dr Balqees Nabi thanked the Planning Commission and FDE over the PC-IV approval and said the college, which had already shown remarkable curricular achievements, would perform even better after the provision of permanent staff members, especially teachers.

“Though we don’t have enough teaching and nonteaching staff members as well as funds, we (college) stood third among all FDE colleges in the results of the recent HSSC-II board exam. Our performance will further improve after getting permanent employees and adequate funds,” he said.

Former Federal Government College Teachers Association president Professor Tahir Mahmood welcomed the development and said it would help further the cause of the women’s education in Islamabad’s southern residential neighbourhoods.

Regretting the delay in the budgetary allocations for I-8/3 IMCG, Bhara Kahu IMCG, and Sihala IMCB even a year after their PC-IV’s approval, he called for the immediate provision of the annual budget and permanent teachers to the college.