FDE to probe delay in repatriation of teachers on deputation

The Federal Directorate of Education (FDE) has constituted a three-member committee to identify those responsible for not repatriating around two hundred teachers to their parents departments after completion of their terms.
“We have constituted a team to expose the FDE officers who after the completion of deputation period of around 200 teachers never bothered to repatriate them to their parent departments,” said Atif Kayani, the FDE director general here on Wednesday. Kayani, who will be heading the new committee, told Pakistan Today that within one month, all those responsible for the delay in that regard would be taken to task.
He said the services of teachers in question had been borrowed for five years from their respective provinces but after completion of their term, they were yet to be sent back to their parent departments.
It is relevant to note here that during last month, the FDE had ordered the repatriation of the teachers to their respective education departments in Punjab, Sindh, Balochistan, Khyber Pakhtunkhwa, Azad Kashmir, FATA and Gilgit Baltistan. Separately, more than 100 female teachers also moved the Islamabad High Court (IHC) urging the court to set aside the FDE repatriation orders and sought absorption in different schools of FDE under ‘wedlock policy’.
The IHC chief justice, Iqbal Hameedur Rehman, on 26 November dismissed their plea and ordered the FDE DG to take action against those who had not repatriated the teachers in time. According to the court orders, the teachers who had been posted in Islamabad under ‘wedlock policy’ were not entitled to be absorbed in the FDE schools.
Under wedlock policy, working couples are entitled to live and work at the same station.
The IHC had observed that there was no provision in the service rules for absorption or taking services of government employees on permanent basis from the provincial departments to the federal departments and directed the Law Ministry to evolve a mechanism for absorption of such appointees.
Atif Kayani said the teachers in question had completed their term and hundreds of other teachers including female teachers from other districts were requesting the FDE to retain their services. He said that FDE had issued notification in that regard to expedite the repatriation process.