Dismissed teachers want jobs back

ISLAMABAD, A delegation of terminated teachers from Dera Ismail Khan visited the federal capital on Wednesday and appealed the government to reinstate their services.

As many as 1,613 teachers deputed in various schools in Dera Ismail Khan were terminated recently, which is considered a crushing blow to the education sector in this remote southern, underserved district of Khyber Pakhtunkhwa.

Experts fear the move will prove detrimental to the education sector of D.I. Khan where the situation is coming to normalcy after years of unrest, string of suicide bombings, sectarian violence and target killing.

Low literacy rate, poor infrastructure, scarcity of funds, high dropout ratio in schools and unavailability of teachers are already bedevilling education in Dera Ismail Khan.

The terminated teachers had been working in primary, middle and high schools. They had been appointed in 2007.

The delegation members told journalists in Islamabad that though it was a provincial subject, they pinned high hopes on the federal government to convince the ANP government in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa to restore their services.

“The PPP government has reinstated 8,000 employees; we do expect the same,” they said.

Emotional scenes were witnessed during their interaction with the media persons when many of them burst into tears while revealing their already low socioeconomic status.

“I was hardly making both ends meet, and I am now perplexed how things will go on for me after losing job,” said a terminated teacher, Mohammad Nadeem.

He said a majority of the terminated teachers were married and supporting children and families through the same job, as the sole source of income.

Meanwhile, the Anjuman-i-Ustazan, D.I. Khan, has also expressed concern over termination of the teachers and observed that apart from affecting the education sector in the district, it would also put in question the livelihood of 1,613 families.