11,000 SST teachers waiting to be regularised

ISLAMABAD: On June 26, Punjab Education Minister Dr Murad Raas had announced through his social media account that his ministry had forwarded a summary to the provincial cabinet for regularisation of teachers but it is yet to be approved even after more than two months.

Dr Murad Raas said almost 11,000 secondary school teachers of BPS-16 grade being appointed from 2014 to onwards, have so far been working on contract basis despite serving for six long years. He said the fate of those teachers seemed in limbo as the provincial government has linked their regularisation process with the clearance of PPSC examination.

The provincial minister tweeted on his social media account on June 26, “SSEs and AEOs summary signed by me and forwarded to the provincial cabinet for discussion and approval. As promised the process has started and I will do my best to move it along. My recommendation is for regularisation without PPSC”.

Talking to ‘The News’ on August 26, Dr Murad Raas said he had submitted the summary to the provincial cabinet for further discussion and approval. The provincial cabinet has forwarded the summary to one of its sub-committees. When asked how long would it take by the sub-committee to return the summary, he said he did not know the time.

The teachers’ representative bodies claimed that it has been around a month that the provincial cabinet had sent the summary to the sub-committee. The representatives said they have already suffered a lot and would launch a protest campaign from September 09 onwards if the provincial government would not take a decision soon.

These bodies have been protesting time and again throughout Punjab, since the government had announced the condition of clearing PPSC examination, demanding to regularize them as they have already fulfilled the criteria.

While the government has assured the teachers’ bodies to resolve the issue but nothing has so far been done in this regard. Meanwhile, the previous government had regularised all the secondary school teachers, appointed before 2012, through an executive order issued by the then Chief Minister Punjab Shahbaz Sharif on August 07, 2015. It is pertinent to mention that the policy of clearing PPSC examination for regularisation was introduced in 2013 and was mandatory but it was set aside by the-then CM through this executive order.

The present government had issued a letter on March 01, 2019 to all the districts education authorities in Punjab regarding the regularisation of the teachers under Punjab Regularization of Service Act. According to the letter, “In continuation of this department letter of dated 07-01-2019 and 19-01-2019 on the subject cited above, I am directed to request you to furnish working papers of eligible SSEs (those who have completed four years of services up to 30-04-2018) for regularisation, so that the same may be submitted to Punjab Public Service Commission (PPSC) for assessing their suitability for regularisation and recommendations on the format as under”.

“The education minister has made several promises to us for the last six months. We held several meetings with the minister who assured us that this issue will be resolved and all the educators will be regularised who were appointed in 2014 onwards, however, these promises are yet to be materialise," commented the members of the core committee secondary school educators.

It is pertinent to mention here that Punjab’s Education Minister Dr Murad Raas tweeted on April 05, “Let me assure you that the decision of the stated issue will be in your favour. Offices are shut down. We are dealing with preventing people from dying right now. I am shocked that saving lives and feeding the hungry should be a priority or regularisation."

He tweeted again on April 25, “The contracts of SSEs and AEOs have been extended for one more year. I know this is not the solution. All of you want to be regularised. Due to the Covid-19 crisis, we had to take this decision. We will resolve this issue for good, once things settle down”.