The Sindh Testing Services (STS) managed by the Sukkur Institute of Business Administration (SIBA) has raised objections to the applications of thousands of madrasa students who have applied for the positions of junior school teachers, Sindhi language teachers (SLTs), primary school teachers (PSTs), and junior elementary school teachers (JESTs).
Earlier this year, then Sindh education minister Saeed Ghani had told the Sindh Assembly about an advertisement issued by the government to recruit teachers. He had said that due to the Covid-19 situation in the province, the government could not hold exams.
Later, Chief Minister Syed Murad Ali Shah chaired a cabinet session in which a policy to hire as many as 46,500teachers through the SIBA was approved.
Last month, while presiding over a meeting at the office of the school education secretary, former education minister Ghani, who has now been assigned the portfolio of the information ministry in lieu of the education ministry, explained that the school education department had received 500,000 applications for the recruitment of 46,500 PSTs, JESTs, SLTs and other posts. The former education minister also directed the SIBA to conduct a transparent recruitment test in the second week of August and ensure the installation of CCTV cameras at the examination centres. On July 31, however, the government announced a nine-day lockdown across the province and halted all the examinations.
At the same time, the SIBA, while scrutinising the documents of the candidates, found that thousands of candidates, especially the madrasa graduates had not attached BA degrees with their applications.
Later, such candidates were informed through the STS portal to attach BA degrees with their applications but they have been unable to comply with the SIBA’s instructions. According to such students, the madrasa graduates have a masters’ degree equivalency issued to them by the Higher Education Commission of Pakistan (HEC).
As per the HEC rules, the students who complete eight-year education in religious seminaries with matriculation are qualified to get an equivalency certificate of 16-year education from the HEC. Therefore, they have requested the SIBA to consider their equivalency certificates.
One of such candidates, Muhammad Idress, told The News, “We have not been provided a separate BA degree or mark sheet while the two-year BA program has been declared unauthorised by the HEC. This is why a majority of the madrasa students have not applied to get admissions to BA programmes. However, we have Sanads [certificates] which are equivalent to BA.”
He added that the SIBA should accept their equivalency certificate of 16-year education. “Rejecting applications of the madrasa students without any valid reason would be the worst form of discrimination. We qualify to appear in the recruitment test for the positions of Islamiat teachers, Arabic school teachers, and Qerat school teachers on the basis of our educational credentials. This is why it's the government responsibility to provide us equal opportunities for jobs,” he remarked.
