Teachers from all over Pakistan, including Azad Kashmir and Gilgit Baltistan, will hold a demonstration in front of the Higher Education Commission’s (HEC) office in Islamabad tomorrow.
The protest is being organized by the All Public Universities BPS Teachers Association (APUBTA) against the delay in the issuance of a notification regarding the approval of their service structure and promotion policy.
Dr Manzoor Ahmad, media secretary of APUBTA, the sit-in will be held for an indefinite time. He added that local teachers of Rawalpindi and Islamabad will host teachers from other cities as well as arrangements have also been made in various hostels and hotels.
In a press release, the association said that their “sole demand is the issuance of notification regarding approval of service structure/promotion policy for all BPS teachers.” The press release added that the “protest and sit-in is being organized against the discriminatory and exploitative policies of the HEC.”
According to the basic pay scale (BPS) teachers, the absence of service structure due to HEC’s “criminal negligence” has denied their fundamental right to promotion. They added that despite the fact that HEC had to prepare the criteria for the promotion under section 10(q) of the HEC ordinance 2002, no progress has been made even after two decades.
“It has created serious issues related to promotion and seniority for over 50,000 BPS faculty members of public sector universities.”
APUBTA has already held several protests across the country in the last three years as it struggles to address the promotion-related problems of the varsity teachers. The BPS teachers have claimed that the HEC have made several written commitments to resolve their issues but to no avail.
An HEC official told a national daily that a committee of vice-chancellors had recently forwarded their recommendations to the universities for implementation. He added that HEC will “look into the genuine demand of university teachers, but there is no fault on our part.”
Source: Pro Pakistani