Zubair Qureshi
Chairman Senate’s Standing Committee on Foreign Relations, Senator Mushahid Hussain Sayed has submitted a calling attention notice in the Upper House seeking explanation from the Ministry of Education and the Federal Directorate of Education (FDE) regarding continued protest and sit-in by the teachers on deputation at the D-Chowk of Islamabad.
In his written note, the former Information Minister the PML-N Senator has observed, “Attention of the Minister for Federal Education and Professional Training is called on an issue of urgent public importance pertaining to repatriation of 200 teachers by the FDE who were on deputation under wedlock policy of the Government of Pakistan.
Since these teachers are now settled in the Federal Capital and their children are studying at schools and colleges, they cannot shift back to their native areas after so many years.”
The PML-N lawmaker has further commented “Given the priority to education and teachers, this action is unjust and detrimental to the cause of education. Minister for Education may kindly come to the House and clarify this injustice done to the teachers by the FDE.
Teachers working on deputation under wedlock policy on the other hand have pledged to continue their protest and sit-in against the repatriation orders of the Federal Directorate of Education and have made it clear they would not budge an inch from the sit-in unless these orders are withdrawn.
According to details, the FDE has issued relieving orders to more than 170 male and female teachers who have spent years teaching at Islamabad schools and some of them located in far flung villages and union councils.
The FDE has done this in utter disregard of teachers’ services and directed their principals and the area education officers (AEO) to relieve them with immediate effect.
Against these orders the lady teachers along with their children and members of family on a protest demonstration outside the National Press Club and appealed to Prime Minister Imran Khan, Chief Justice Gulzar Ahmed, Education Minister Shafqat Mahmood and the HR Minister Dr Shireen Mazari to withdraw these orders as they had lost their right of lien back in their parent departments and had nowhere to go now.
Holding placards and banners inscribed with slogans like “Give Respect to Teachers” “Don’t separate teachers from their families,” these teachers of the federal educational institutions regretted the FDE Director Planning and a number of other senior officials had misled the new Director General Ikram Ali Malik and convinced him to send these teachers back to their parent departments.
They were calling for one time induction of all the deputation teachers who are currently working under wedlock policy. This one time induction was even approved by the then Prime Minister in the PPP government days, they said.
Interestingly they said certain ‘blue-eyed’ teachers who were not only absorbed in the federal schools but their date of absorption was made since the first day of their joining on deputation so that their seniority might not suffer.
