Police stop teachers from marching on CM House

The sit-in of protesting headmasters outside the Sindh Assembly entered the seventh day on Monday. The headmasters demand of the government to provide them permanent jobs and have been protesting in some or other form for the last 22 days.

Both the parties — the Sindh government and the headmasters — have so far not been able to arrive at a solution. The government says that it cannot regularise the educators because of court decisions while the protesters say they will not withdraw their the demand for regularisation.

On Friday, the protesting teachers had hinted that they would besiege the Chief Minister House. As they tried to march on the CM House on Saturday, police stopped them. The protesters claimed that due to police action, two female teachers were shifted to hospitals for treatment and some of their colleagues were also taken into custody.

However, on Monday, the teachers once again tried to move to the CM House but police stopped them at the PIDC Chowrangi. Kamran Jaffery, a representative of the protesting teachers of the Karachi division, told The News that police arrested around 12 female teachers who were later released, but as many as 25 male teachers were still in police custody.

“We are very clear. We have fulfilled the requirements for the jobs advertised by the Sindh government back then. Now we have only one demand. We want permanent jobs,” he asserted.

“The Sindh government says that it can’t take any decision regarding the protesting headmasters due to the court decisions. But the fact is that protesting headmasters were not a part of the petition decided by the Sindh High Court Karachi bench. There were some who took the matter to the court making the Sindh party. So the provincial government lost the case against the petitioners. Likewise, the headmasters, who are now protesting against the provincial government, were a part of the petition filed in the SHC Hyderabad bench. The SHC Hyderabad has decided the case in favour of the teachers. Therefore, the Sindh government should implement the decision of the SHC Hyderabad bench,” Jaffery maintained. He announced that the teachers would continue protesting until the government met their demand.

Police, however, claimed that they had released all the arrested teachers. Civil Lines SHO Salahuddin Qazi maintained that police did not want to make arrests and they were attempting to negotiate with the protesting teachers; however, due to some reason, the protesting teachers panicked and a stampede occurred, in which three teachers were injured.

A clash occurred between police and the teachers, in which the former charged the latter with batons. The SHO said police detained over one-and-a-half dozen teachers and shifted them to different police stations but later released all of them, following which the protesters ended their sit-in protest at the PIDC Chowk.

Meanwhile, Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf MPA Khurrum Sher Zaman, while expressing solidarity with the protesting headmasters, said the Sindh government should immediately accept the legitimate demands of teachers and police violence against peaceful teachers was unacceptable. He said the PTI would also raise the issue in the Sindh Assembly. The Time Scale Sindh Professors and Lecturers Association in a statement also condemned the arrests and announced support for the protesting headmasters.