The Government of Azad Jammu and Kashmir (AJK) has decided to make recruitment of school teachers through an independent third party organisation, National Testing Service (NTS), aimed to ensure merit in recruitment and raise the standard of education in the territory.
“The decision has been taken to avoid political influence in teachers’ appointments which has badly damaged the education system lowering down the standard as well and to ensure provision of jobs to qualified and competent youths,” Education Minister Barrister Iftikhar Gilani said here Sunday.
The minister said by now, no appointment shall be made by the departmental selection committees or any officer of the department in any manner and any one found guilty shall be strictly punished as he did yesterday by suspending an education officer and cancelling the appointments of two teachers, she made.
He said literacy rate in Azad Kashmir was highest as compared to the other provinces and areas of Pakistan but standard of education was gone lower rapidly in the recent past due to political appointments in the department and his government was committed to rectify this.
“Our government is committed to restore merit and good governance as we had promised with the people during electioneering and people mandated us to bring reforms,” Gilani told adding this was the first step towards a long and difficult journey.
The qualifications for the teachers are also been raised by matriculation to BA, B.Ed. for Primary teacher and F.A to MA, BEd for junior teachers aimed to hire more able and qualified teachers to meet the requirement of time, but unfortunately, more than 500 schools in the territory have no buildings after 2005 earthquake.
The minister however, said the government was striving hard to early construct the buildings of these schools but the resource constraints were blocking their way and they had entered in an agreement with Islamic Development Bank (IDB) to provide soft loan for the construction of these schools.
More than 300 school buildings are construction by Earth quake Rehabilitation and Reconstruction Authority (ERRA) but their completion have been delayed for the decade due fund constraint and other reasons and the children are still under open sky.