Teachers up in arms against govt

Announcing a massive movement against the Punjab government, Punjab Professors and Lecturers Association (PPLA) held a protest demonstration from MAO College to the Punjab Civil Secretariat in favour of their demands on Thursday.
College teachers, who had boycotted classes in over 500 colleges of the province, were demanding a time scale for promotion and the 50 percent increment promised by Punjab Chief Minister Shahbaz Sharif in June. The teachers were carrying placards and chanting slogans against the Punjab government in general and the CM in particular.
“Zulfiqar Khosa and Shahbaz Sharif met the former PPLA president Nazim Husnain offered bribery to start a movement against Pervaiz Musharraf. Husnain refused and asked them to not to make the college professors’ life difficult once they come into power, that is exactly what Shahbaz Sharif is doing,” said a college professor asking not to be named. “Everybody is against him, his government will come tumbling down,” said another college professor. “I don’t understand their education policy. All students from class 9 to Intermediate part II are up against the government. That speaks volumes of how seriously the Education Department is being taken,” PPLA Central President Zahid Ahmad Sheikh He said some college teachers had been waiting for promotion for over 20 to 25 years now, adding that if Azad Kashmir, Sindh and Balochistan governments could approve the time scale for promotion, the Punjab government could do so too. “The summary has been lying on his desk for over three months now,” he said, “we have had enough”. “Over 3,700 seats are lying vacant all over Punjab.
There are no principals in the city’s major colleges, including Government MAO College, Samnabad College and Science College. Shahbaz Sharif should stop calling himself the khadim-e-ala,” said another PPLA leader, Dr Tahir Sheikh, adding “the doctors protested and they got their scales upgraded, the school teachers followed suit, it is our turn now.” “The CM should resign and go home if SC is the one making sure that the province is being run smoothly,” said Abdul Khaliq Nadeem, a PPLA member.