Teaching assistants demand regularisation of services

PESHAWAR: The teaching assistants appointed in the Higher Education Department in 2014 have demanded the government to regularise their services.

Talking to The News, a group of teaching assistants said that a few years ago almost 46,000 candidates appeared in the test and 2,200 qualified, of whom only 800 (500 males and 300 females) were appointed on contract basis (fixed pay) for a period of two years.

The teaching assistants were appointed in various colleges of Khyber Pakhtunkhwa against the vacant posts of lecturers and there was previously no cadre of teaching assistants in colleges, they added.

They recalled that that Mushtaq Ghani, now provincial minister for Higher Education, had promised on May 20, 2015 that they would be regularised soon.

“MPA Mrraj Humayun raised the issue in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa Assembly. And then our case was referred by the Speaker to the standing committee No 8 (HED) of KP Assembly,” said one of the teaching assistants, adding, the committee approved our regularisation as lecturer.

They said the case was referred to different departments (Finance, Establishment and Law) for opinion. All the departments gave opinion in their favour.

However, they lamented that the regularisation bill, introduced in the KP Assembly on October 26, 2016, is still pending due to lack of interest of the PTI government.

In November 2016, they said, they were given extension of one year with the promise that they would be regularised in the June 2017 budget but to no avail.

They deplored that the contract employees of different departments were regularised but the teaching assistants were being ignored although the relevant departments and standing committee of KP were in favour of their regularisation.