It is prime responsibility of the government to create employment opportunities by boosting economic activities in the country. And this we did by not only providing jobs to our youth in government departments but also implemented programmes of technical and vocational training to enable our youth to get employment in private sector.
Sindh Chief Minister Qaim Ali Shah said this while presenting a budget 2013-14 at Sindh Assembly on Monday. However, the CM did not mention that thousands of people appointed in education and local government departments were not getting salaries for the last more than a year.
And, these thousands of people and their families are going through tough days in the ever-growing inflation. Interestingly, the chief executive also announced 160,000 new jobs in the Sindh government with around 30,000 jobs in police and the rest in other departments.
The officials at the Sindh’s education department were optimistic that the chief minister would announce to resolve the salary issue of the people appointed by the PPP government in last tenure. But they were shocked as the the funds were allocated in the budget to pay 10,000 people working with provincial government for more than a year but no announcement was made in this regard.
However, when asked the other day, Syed Murad Ali while giving post-budget briefing said an inquiry was being conducted how these people were appointed. But contrary to this, sources said these people were appointed on merit and few of them were sold out and the appointees must not be denied their legal and constitutional right.
Shah said as the PPP government had always awarded jobs to the unemployed and its track record showed that it had been against the removal of people from their jobs, then how come that these officials, mostly the teachers, were not receiving their salaries.
The sources said violation of fundamental rights was quite a common phenomenon but here in Sindh it had crossed all the limits as more than 10,000 families of those appointed in education and local government department were being denied salaries since May 2012.
These families have been left at the mercy of senior education officials, however, these teachers were continuously performing their duties despite serious financial crunch that every middle class person was going through nowadays.
The former PPP-led Sindh government had announced to recruit more than 1,300 SLTs in BPS-9, 14 and 15 with the condition that the candidate must have studied the Sindhi language as a compulsory subject.
The written test for the female candidates was held at SafiaKhanumMemorialSchool near Gurumandir and for boys at Government Boys and Girls School Moosmiyat in March 2012. The interviews were conducted in April 2012, however, the process was halted completely over the difference of appointment procedure between CM Qaim Ali Shah and Education Minister Pir Mazhar.
The matter got worse after former MNA Faryal Talpur jumped into it and got his brother-in-law Dr Faalullah Pechuho appointed as secretary education who never respected Pir Mazhar. With all this, the worst sufferers were those appointed on the vacant posts and were performing their duties with not a single penny paid since June 2012, sources added.
And ironically, Secretary Education Dr Fazaullah Pechuho also forwarded a letter to the Sindh accountant general requesting them not to release salaries of the SLTs until the secretary’s office verifies the candidates.
The sources said the matter had become an ‘ego’ for the secretary education who refused to sign the list forwarded by the accountant general for the release of salaries. However, dozens of teachers continued visiting the Sindh secretariat for getting their salaries, they added.
The sources said all the district and assistant district officers had time and again requested that the salaries of 600 teachers appointed on vacant posts be released henceforth, however, the senior official seemed least concerned with the financial problems of these appointees.
“It seems the issue of salaries has become a matter of ego between the education secretary and the accountant general office. And resultantly, the teachers and their families are suffering,” a teachers who works in a school without salary told Pakistan Today.
“We don’t have budget for the release of salaries. I don’t see resolution of this matter in near future as the surplus appointments were made in the departments. The issue can be resolved politically,” Additional Secretary Education Shafiq Mahesar told Pakistan Today.
