PTI’s Zaman demands full-time education minister in Sindh

As many as 10,000 teachers around the province who passed the tests held by the University of Sindh, Iqra University and National Testing Services await regularisation but the Sindh government is taking too much time to regularise them.

The Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf (PTI) Karachi region president, Khurrum Sher Zaman, said this as he re-affirmed his support for the striking teachers seeking regularisation. “I don’t understand why the Sindh government is taking so much time to regularise these teachers that have gone through necessary procedures and passed the required tests,” Zaman, who is also an MPA, said.

He added that it was injustice to them who played by the rules set by the Sindh government and in the end, did not get their deserved entitlement. The PTI leader slated Sindh Chief Minister Murad Ali Shah, who also holds the portfolio of education, for showing apathy towards the legitimate demands of striking teachers and for the poor state of public education throughout the province.

“I demand that the Sindh government immediately issue a notification to regularise these teachers [on strike] and the chief minister should step aside as the education minister and appoint a full-time minister for this important department,” he said.

Zaman remarked that it was pitiful to see the CM’s education emergency turning into a nightmare. “The quality of education in government schools is pathetic, as 83 per cent of students from rural Sindh failed Karachi University’s entry test,” he said.

“Furthermore, the results of the recent NED University admission test showed that no Sindh education board could achieve more than a 37 per cent success rate in that test, even as the federal, Cambridge and Aga Khan boards secured more than a 70 per cent pass rate,” he said.

He said the teachers who had passed the tests and were awaiting regularisation should be replacing the ill-trained teachers currently employed in government schools so that we could see better results in the future.

He said the PTI will voice its support inside and outside the assembly for the protesting teachers until they received their just entitlement.