Dera Ismail Khan 1600 Teachers Terminated
Dera Ismail Khan: The Education Department in this underserved district of Khyber Pakhtunkhwa was dealt a crushing blow when services of around 1,613 teachers deputed at various schools were terminated suddenly.
Experts fear the move would prove detrimental to education sector in Dera Ismail Khan, where situation is coming to normalcy after years of unrest, string of suicide bombings, sectarian violence and target killings besides poverty and illiteracy.
Low literacy rate, poor infrastructure, scarcity of funds, high dropout ratio of students in the schools and unavailability of teachers is already bedeviling education in the district. The terminated teachers included PTC, CT, DM and TT serving in several high, middle and primary schools. They were appointed in 2007.
Human rights activists believe rendering people jobless on such a mass scale would lead to humanitarian crisis, especially in district, which is yet to see employment opportunities, development as well as other basic necessities of life.
A delegation of these teachers went to Islamabad where they told reporters on Wednesday they would appeal the government to help this issue resolved in line with its people-friendly policies.
The participants of delegation said though theirs was a provincial subject, they pinned high hopes on the federal government to convince ANP government in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa to adopt a lenient view given humanitarian nature of the issue.
Meanwhile, Anjuman-e-Ustazan Dera Ismail Khan expressed concern at the termination of services of 1,613 teachers and observed that apart from casting extremely adverse impact on overall poor education, it would also put in question the livelihood of 1,613 families.
Emotional scenes were witnessed during their interaction with media when many of the teachers burst into tears while revealing their already fledgling socioeconomic status. "I was hardly making both ends meet, and I am now perplexed as to how things would go on for me after losing job," said a terminated teacher, Muhammad Nadeem. He said majority of teachers were married and supporting children and families through the same job as the sole source of income. The news
