The Government Secondary Teachers Association (GSTA), on Sunday, announced a hunger strike at the Karachi Press Club on 30 December to demand the reopening of schools and the issuance of salaries to the teachers who had been recruited by the School Education and Literacy Department in 2012.
The GSTA has also blamed the provincial government for deliberately disrupting the education system in the government schools under the pretext of COVID-19.
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The GSTA Central President, Maqsood Mehmood Mahesar, said, “The PPP government has kept the children of Sindh away from schools under the pretext of COVID-19 to cover up its failure while holding political meetings itself”.
He added that the authorities have ignored the GSTA’s seven-point charter of demands that details the concerns of the teachers.
The demands include the immediate reopening of schools; the issuance of the salaries of other cadre teachers that had been recruited across Sindh in 2012; the permanent promotions of the teachers who had passed the NTS, University of Sindh, Iqra University, and the IBA tests; basic pay scale 17 for all the junior school teachers; and group insurance for all employees at the time of retirement.
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Mahesar also highlighted that the shortage of teachers in the province requires the hiring of at least 40,000 teachers, and opined that only teachers should be appointed for and promoted to administrative posts.
The president further remarked that the GSTA has decided to make 2021 a standard academic year in which it will begin a campaign at the community level, and hinted that the teachers might go on a long march starting at Kashmore in the last week of January 2021.
