LAHORE: Hundreds of teachers of the Basic Education Community School (BECS) on Monday held a demonstration in front of the Punjab Assembly for the acceptance of their demands.

A large number of male and female teachers, who came from various far-flung cities and villages from across the province, held a sit-in and protest, urging the government to regularize their services and fix their salaries under the provincial labour laws.

The protesters, holding placards and banners, chanted slogans against the government and the Literacy Department.

They said they would not call off their strike till the education ministry issues their regularization orders.

The BECS was the subsidiary of the Ministry of Federal Education and Professional Training and had 12,000 informal schools across the country, most of which had one teacher for one school.

BECS teacher Rabia Jameel said after the 18th Amendments, Sindh, KP and Blochistan regularized BECS teachers of their province under the education department but Punjab was refusing to do so.

She said that even after serving for more than two decades, their services are yet to be regularized.

She said they are being paid Rs8,000 per month, which is not even half of the minimum wage set by the provincial government.

She said the BESC is an important organisation and its issues should be resolved on a priority basis or the government’s drive for enrollment of out-of-school children would suffer.

Protesters said BESC teachers have been playing an important role in improving the literacy rate in the country, but they are not getting due attention from the government.

They said that the teachers associated with the programme have been faced with inconsistency in the last many years and they are pushing the government to regularise them.

The protesters said that more teachers from across the province would join the protest on Tuesday for the redressal of their demands. The protesters held a meeting with the education ministry officials, but would not call off the strike till they get regularisation orders, they warned.

Published in Dawn, February 8th, 2022