Zubair Qureshi
After concerns raised by the members of the Senate Standing Committee on Education with regard to the missing ‘Family Protection bill’ of Islamabad’s lady teachers, these teachers are now hopeful their bill will be recovered and sent to the President for signature.
The Senate Standing Committee on Education under the chairmanship of Senator Irfan-ul-Haq Siddiqui had a day earlier (Monday) pointed out that the private member bill “Family Protection & Wedlock Bill 2023” was passed unanimously by both Houses of the Parliament earlier this year, by the National Assembly on July 28 and the Senate on August 7 and as per Standard Operating Procedure (SOP) it was to be sent to the Aiwan-e-Sadr for signature without delay. But it has gone missing and is misplaced somewhere causing panic among the teachers and their families.
Some high-ranking officials in the Ministry of Parliamentary Affairs have stopped the file since then and blocked its movement to the President House.
These 300 teachers have been working in various schools of the Federal Directorate of Education (FDE) under wedlock policy and the bill has guaranteed their absorption.
According to sources, some senior officials of the Prime Minister’s Office as well as the Parliamentary Affairs Ministry want to change the list of the teachers that are to be benefited by the bill and want to include their relatives therefore they have halted the entire process.
A senior official while talking to Pakistan Observer Tuesday denied these allegations. However, he said there were some issues therefore the Private Members Bill “Protection of Family Life and Wedlock Bill 2023” has been put on a halt. However, he refused to speak about those ‘issues.’Since teachers figure nowhere in the priority list of the government, these teachers are now left high and dry facing indifference by the bureaucracy. They are forced to keep shuttling from one Ministry to the other requesting the Baboos to send their Parliament-passed bill to the President.
“We are told by the senior officials of the PM Office and the Ministry of Parliamentary Affairs that even if the Parliament has passed the bill, they (these officials) have the final authority to decide when to move the bill,” said an elderly teacher quoting one of the officials. Interestingly, one of these officials had been my student but since they are ‘all powerful’ today and we are merely ‘teachers’ we have to face such humiliation, she regretted.
Another lady teacher while referring to the recent visits of teachers to the PM House and the show of respect by Caretaker PM Anwarul Haq Kakar to them praised the prime minister for remembering his teachers.
