It seems that the Ministry of Federal Education and Professional Training is unaware of the actual number of teachers employed in Islamabad Capital Territory (ICT) educational institutions as it has wrongly quoted number of vacant posts of the teaching staff to a Senate body.
According to a brief submitted by the ministry to the Senate’s Functional Committee on Government Assurance last week, there were 9,390 teaching positions in all educational institutions under the Federal Directorate of Education (FDE). Of them, the brief said, 1,549 were vacant.
However, the documents obtained by Daily Times revealed that the total sanctioned strength of teachers and number of vacant teaching positions was contradicting the statistics submitted by the ministry to the Senate’s committee.
As per the documents, the FDE has 7,603 teachers, including 2,503 male and female 4,390, of all cadres. Of them, 1,044 positions are vacant. An official in the ministry wishing not to be named said that it was very regretting that the ministry did not know about the exact number of posts.
While justifying the vacant teaching slots, the ministry claimed before the committee that 287 appointment cases had been sent to the Federal Public Service Commission. The ministry also acknowledged the delay in regularisation f 1,770 daily-wage teachers associated with the Federal Directorate of Education (FDE). However, it claimed that the matter was in court and the ministry would comply with whatever the decision would come.
A senior official said that ministry should have given accurate information to the Senate’s committee so that appropriate policies could be framed to improve the system.
Besides, the ministry also shared inaccurate information regarding vacant positions of non-teaching employees of the FDE. The ministry told the committee that there were 1,700 posts of various non-teaching cadres. However, official documents stated that the figure stands at 1,420. The ministry also did not share total sanctioned strength of such staffers, which according to the documents, was 3,779.
When contacted, a senior FDE official said that wrong figures were not shared by the directorate. “Through a letter to the ministry on December 26 last year, we provided comprehensive statists of all employees working in the FDE, including those working on deputation.”
Moreover, 1,770 FDE daily wagers have been waiting for their regularization for the last many years. Soon after PTI came into power, the FDE daily wagers pinned high hopes for resolution of their issue. However, the issued is yet to be resolved.
Published in Daily Times, January 14th 2019.
