Teachers boycott polio campaign’s duties

Thousands of teachers from across the province have refused to perform duties in the polio campaign, which has been scheduled to start from Tuesday (today). Punjab teachers, under the banner of Punjab Teachers Unions (PTU) and Joint Action Committee (JAC), condemned the Punjab Health Department for assigning the teachers duties in the polio campaign and boycotted on the claim that the schools across the province were suffering owing to the absence of teachers from schools.
The Punjab government, on the other hand, has spent millions on the campaign’s advertisement, which will go to waste if the campaign is not successful.
Teachers are annoyed at the Punjab government for taking action against them for showing poor performance on one hand, while continuing to give them extra duties such as in the polio campaign on the other.
PTU Deputy General Secretary Rana Liaqat Ali told Pakistan Today that the entire province’s teachers boycotted their polio-related duties except the teachers from Rajanpur and Muzzafergarh, where the government threatened the teachers to perform their duties. He said they will not bear governmental pressure and will continue the boycott.
He said that in a single month of March, the teachers were busy in conducting the exams of class eight and five, they were sent for duty in Universal Primary Education Program while they also perfumed duties in house listing. He said that now the government was sending them for the polio campaign, which was unfair.
Another PTU member said that for the last three months, teachers were not available in many of the province’s schools, and at various places, the students had not even started their coursework. He said one or two teachers, who were responsible for hundreds of student, were running many of the schools alone. He said that this year, results would suffer owing to teachers’ absence and the government would be responsible for it.
On the other hand, an official of the EDO (Education) said that after the teachers’ boycott, the EDO office has sent class four’s employees on the campaign’s duties, as the EDO office could not convince teachers to perform duties. According to a Health Department’s official, the polio campaign would suffer owing to teachers’ absence and the campaign’s targets would not be achieved. He said that they were trying to mange the situation and he was hopeful that they will get volunteers for the campaign.