A tale of two protests

This week, teachers took to the streets in two provinces – and showed us how both the Sindh and Punjab governments feel about their teachers. On Thursday, in Karachi, over 2,000 protesting teachers were baton-charged and tear gas shelled. In Lahore, teachers holding a dharna outside the Punjab Assembly have been ignored for four days. It was a PPP government in Sindh and a PTI government in Punjab – two different political parties but seemingly similar in how they view protesting educators. The issues in both provinces are similar. The Government School Teachers Association in Sindh is demanding a time-scale system for promotions, while the Punjab Professors and Lecturers Association (PPLA) is also demanding service structure reform. Both organisations represent thousands of teachers in Sindh’s schools and Punjab’s colleges.Since Tuesday, over two hundred teachers from public-sector colleges across Punjab have been camping outside the provincial legislature, waiting for the government to come to the talks table. The demands are simple enough: service structure reform, pay protection and scale upgradation. The PPLA representatives claim that this should be done on the model the PTI implemented in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa. It would seem like the perfect opportunity for the PTI to swoop in and fulfil its claims of improving public-sector education. However, for the last four-days, the relevant ministers have been missing in action.In Sindh, members of the GSTA were beaten up after they started walking towards the CM House. The education secretary even went as far as claiming that protesting close to exams was a ‘conspiracy’. There is a clear sense that there is no desire to fulfil the legitimate demands of public-sector teachers or invest into the education sector. Provincial education budgets continue to lapse each year, while government officials continue to claim there is no money available. The PPLA claims that over 1,500 seats remain vacant in public-sector colleges, while public-sector professors have not been promoted due to inaction by the bureaucracy and changing rules. Both organisations have been negotiating with the government for months, but there has been no movement in terms of implementing the changes. Clearly, the current system is designed to demoralise public-sector teachers, and force them to protest on the streets, rather than teaching their students. The college professors cite the ever-changing bureaucracy as part of the reason why the system in such chaos. The protests will continue until the governments act. Perhaps, instead of baton-charging or ignoring teachers, the two provincial governments should be looking to resolve the legitimate demands of those who teach our country’s future generations.

from The News International - Editorial https://ift.tt/2K4IVp9