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Tuesday March 19, 2024

Teachers of tribal districts oppose merger in KP Education Dept

By Bureau report
January 15, 2019

PESHAWAR: Teachers of government-run schools in tribal districts have opposed the merger of Fata Education Directorate into Khyber Pakhtunkhwa Education Department as they feared it would affect their promotion process, payment of incentives and construction of the schools’ buildings.

Speaking at a press conference at Peshawar Press Club on Monday, All Tribal Teachers Association leaders headed by their president Naseer Shah Afridi urged the government to avoid merging the Fata Education Directorate into KP Education Department at least for five years, or else it would cause unrest among the teachers.

Flanked by other teacher leaders including Shariat Khan Wazir, Marjan Ali Mohmand, Olas Khan, and Asif Afridi, he said the Khyber Pakhtunkhwa government was already facing financial constraints and the additional burden of salaries of 44,000 tribal teachers would further add to the constraints.

The association chief talked about the pathetic condition of the schools’ buildings in tribal districts and said that most of the buildings were damaged, facing lack of drinking water and washrooms while many of them had been closed for non-availability of staff.

The status of Fata Education Directorate, he suggested, should be kept intact to run the affairs smoothly. He said the promotion process of teachers needed to be completed at the earliest in addition to the solution of the incentives issues.

The teachers’ representative asked for filling the vacancies of teachers in the merged districts so that all the schools could be made functional in different districts. He said the students of tribal districts had suffered badly during the past many years due to militancy and lack of attention on part of the successive governments.Afridi urged the government to promote senior teachers to remove unrest among them.