Teachers demand revision in service structure

Islamabad : The college teachers serving in the educational institutions run by the Federal Directorate of Education (FDE) in Islamabad have demanded of authorities concerned to bring improvement in their service structure in line with the provinces of Khyber Pakhtunkhwa and Punjab.

The provinces like Khyber Pakhtunkhwa and Punjab have improved the service structure of their college teachers in 2012 but the federal education department is yet to take steps in this regard.

According to an official source, a new service structure famously known as four-tier promotion formula was introduced for college teachers in the country in the year 1991. As per the four-tier service structure, the college teachers of various grades are employed with a prescribed ratio 1:15:34:50 i.e.

one per cent of the total strength are Professors in BPS-20, fifteen percent are Associate Professors in BPS-19, thirty-four per cent are Assistant Professors in BPS-18 and fifty percent of the total strength Lecturers are in BPS-17. It was observed by the provincial education departments of Khyber Pakhtunkhwa, Punjab that the promotion pace of college teachers remained very slow during 1991-2012. Consequently, the provinces redesigned the four-tier formula of college teachers in 2012 in an effort to attract the best teachers and improve student achievement.

Khyber Pakhtunkhwa (KP) province changed the ratio of the four-tier formula from 1:15:34:50 to 5:20:37:38 and Punjab changed the ratio of the four-tier formula from 1:15:34:50 to 3:19:36:42. In the year 2020, KP government once again revised the service structure and four-tier formula changed to five-tier formula with a ratio of 0.5:6:22:35.5:36 which means that 0.5 per cent teachers are in BPS-21, 06 per cent of the teachers are in BPS-20, 22 per cent are in BPS-19, 35.5 per cent are in BPS-18 and 36 per cent of the total strength is in BPS-17. Resultantly, the promotion pace of the teachers increased and service structure reasonably became lucrative in the provinces.

Contrary to this, the federal education department is still stuck in the old four tier formula of 1991, due to which, promotions in the upper grades are extremely slow. The majority of the teachers retire in BPS-19 due to the slow-paced old 4 tier formula.

Ayesha, a lecturer in a college said, “Teachers performed excellently during COVID-19 pandemic and were always willing to go the ‘extra mile’ while improving the service structure of capital teachers does not seem to be a priority of the government right now.”

“The capital city should have been in the leading position and a role model in offering a lucrative service structure but unfortunately it is lagging behind and the college teachers are the worst sufferers", she said.

Professor Tahir Mahmood, a representative of Federal Government College Teachers Association (FGCTA) said, “Unfortunately, discrimination against capital teachers continues by not offering identical promotion structure despite the fact they perform identical work functions.”

He said that revision of the four-tier formula is a long standing demand of college teachers.

He demanded that the existing four-tier formula of college teachers should be changed into the 5-tier formula on the analogy of KP college teachers in order to mitigate the sufferings of the teachers.

When contacted, an official of FDE informed that the matter of revision of service structure of college teachers was held up in FDE and Finance Division due to various reasons.