The teachers of Federal Government Colleges have demanded an overhaul of the administrative structure of the Federal Directorate of Education (FDE) in order to resolve their issues. According to the teachers, the imbalanced administrative structure of the department was the root cause of their long standing unresolved issues which has created unrest among teachers.
The issues like creation of posts of teachers, pending promotion cases, unavailability of funds for rental ceiling, Grant of Higher time scale to the teachers regularized through cabinet sub-committee, Grant of Higher time scale from eligibility date, Grant of MS Allowance, Revision of 4-tier service structure etc have not been resolved since long. According to them there is no separate director for F.G colleges at FDE and administrative powers are concentrated in few hands, making the officers of FDE overburdened.
Talking to APP, an Associate Professor at Islamabad Model Postgraduate College H-8, on the condition of anonymity said, it is believed that a jack of all trades can never cope with the pace of progress but this stance is alien in FDE.
The post of Director (Colleges) is being held by a teacher of model colleges who was already holding two offices, that is, Area Education Officer (Urban) and Director Model Colleges. The same teacher has been given an additional charge as Director Ex-FG Colleges. One man takes all the decisions and decides the modes of implementing them. This act by the highest FDE authorities has raised questions such as if there is a dearth of capable officers in FDE or the FG Colleges to hold this most important and promising office.
Citing another example of merit violation, the Associate Professor alleged that the Director Academics, supervising advance BS level courses in ICT colleges is a Headmistress of a school who does not have a single day experience of teaching the graduate and postgraduate level classes nor she worked in a college even for a short time.
The Associate Professor demanded the authorities to appoint competent, experienced and well qualified officers from FDE and Ex-FG Colleges to supervise affairs of these institutions of higher education.
Dr Rahima Rahman, President of Federal Government College Teachers (FGCTA) said, our colleges like IMCG I-8/3, I-14/3, Bhara Kahu and Humak have been facing the issue of creation of posts and budget for the last over a decade and we are left with no other option but moving pillar to post in the offices of ministry and expenditure wing of Finance Division. Similarly our promotion cases of Assistant professors were turned down while all others were considered. There are dozens of issues college teachers are facing but unfortunately there seems nobody at the respective department to resolve their issues. It means FG Colleges are being thrown in the background, as there is no representation of these colleges in the administrative positions of FDE, in spite of the fact that these are Higher Educational Institutions offering graduate and postgraduate level courses in different subjects. She has demanded administrative reforms at FDE for effective resolution of college teachers’ issues.
Anum Kaleem, Joint Secretary of the association said, principals are unable to contribute to the decision-making process of the organization. They are merely implementers of decisions made at FDE level. There is no initiative in work as they perform tasks set by FDE which limits their creativity and devotion due to the rigidity of the work. The inability of authorities to decentralize the administrative powers adds a lot of work to their desks.
They suffer from a lack of time to resolve the issues of colleges. There is a need to overhaul the administrative powers at FDE, Anum Kaleem said.
