The teachers working in the federal government-run colleges are not happy with the “ambiguous” promotions notification issued on the directives of Prime Minister Yousaf Raza Gilani. The college teachers are of the view that after six years’ struggle and one month long continuous boycott of classes, they were appeased by an ambiguous notification of granting them a time-scale promotions formula.
Slamming the Capital Administrative and Development Division (CAAD), FG College Teacher Association (FGCTA) General Secretary Tahir Mahmood said the PM on October 8, 2010 had announced promotions for teachers under a time-scale formula, but some officials of CAAD, “replaced the original formula with an ambiguous one”.
He said that according to CAAD articulated formula, “Those who are working in a specific scale for the last 10 and 20 years respectively would be given one step promotion.. which is a sheer injustice with those who are not promoted for the last 20 years.”
He said that the notification was issued on14th October after a 22 days on road march of college professors and they called off the strike forthwith. As a matter of practice, implementation of every policy meets a disastrous end with our bureaucratic set up.
During the background interviews with college teachers, Pakistan Today observed that the frustration and anxiety was mounting among them again because Federal Directorate o f Education and CADD, the two bodies concerned with the issue are putting blames and shifting responsibility on each other.
The newly restructured set up after devolution of the Ministry of Education has left the matters in the hands of even worse non-technocrat officials. Tahir Mahmood has pointed out that the person empowered to implement this time scale formula in the office of the CADD is absolutely incompetent and this issue is hardly manageable for him.
“The CAAD’s officer concerned Rafiq Tahir is not a bureaucrat so he cannot handle the office files properly. He is unable to clarify the different components of the time scale formula. He should clarify whether or not the facilities associated with regular scale are also included in the time scale such as house requisition, personal allowance and orderly allowance etc,” said Tahir Mahmood.
Tahir said the approved formula merely upheld an increase in the basic pay and said FGCTA would out rightly reject it. He specifically denounced the Clause III of the notification that reads: “There would be no consecutive time-scale promotions”.
Commenting on the issue FGCTA Vice President Professor Yasmeen Rehman said: “It simply means that an officer will be promoted to next grade only once and he or she will again be stuck in the same grade until his or her nomenclature is changed.”
She demanded a lecturer should be given the BPS-18, assistant professor the BPS-19, and associate professor the BPS-20 and professor the BPS-21 as it was announced on October 5, 2006 by the then prime minister.
