Sindh Education and Culture Minister Syed Sardar Ali Shah has directed all the district education officers to ensure placement by October 15 of the successful candidates who had applied for the posts of junior school teacher and primary school teachers.
He warned that failure to comply with his directive would lead to strict action. In order to improve the teaching system in Sindh, he said it was necessary to complete the appointment process.
Expressing anger at the slow appointment process for the teachers, Shah said that despite clear policy, it was surprising that the successful candidates were yet to start teaching.
Presiding over a meeting with education department officials, the minister said that all possible measures should be taken because one year had already passed after the examinations but the vacant JST and PST posts were yet to be filled. The district education officers should play their role to complete the process as soon as possible, he added.
He ordered that after the appointment of teachers, the required formalities for issuing salaries should be completed soon. In the areas where teachers were needed, the appointments should be made on a priority basis, he said.
To continue education in the flood emergency, Shah said that temporary schools should be established in tent cities as an alternative measure. “I will supervise the tent schools through video calls.”
The provincial minister also directed officials of the education department to conduct a special inquiry into fake recruitment. He asked the district administration across Sindh to remove relief camps from schools and transfer the victims to tent settlements so that education of children was not affected.
He added that the safety of the furniture in the schools where relief camps had been set up was the responsibility of their respective headmasters.
In the areas where the school buildings were submerged or had been damaged due to rains, the district administration would conduct surveys to estimate the actual losses of the schools, the meeting was told.
Briefing the meeting, School Education Human Resources Director General Zameer Khoso said a total of 265,282 candidates had participated in the examinations for 17,423 JST posts, of whom 51,785 candidates were declared successful. So far 12,795 offer orders had been issued while appointment orders issued to 10,454 candidates, he said.
Khoso said that 297,487 candidates had participated in the examinations for the 39,849 vacant PST posts, of whom 84,080 were declared passed and offer orders had been issued to 24,951 of them while appointment orders would also be issued to 21,351 candidates.
He said that recruitment process was under way and more than 90 per cent of the recruitment had been completed in many districts of Sindh.
Speaking to the media after the meeting, the provincial minister said that after filling 12,000 posts of JST and 25,000 posts of PSTs in the education department, another 14,000 posts were vacant due to retirement of teachers from the department, and to fill those posts, recruitment process would start this year.
He explained that due to the floods, 22,000 schools had been affected across Sindh, the buildings of 17,000 of which had been completely or partially damaged.
Due to the impact of the floods on the teaching process, temporary schools were being set up to continue with teaching so that 2.8 million affected children were not deprived of education.