Politicians should change their mentality towards Teachers.

            Teachers are not an opposing party to the Government either in the Parliament or in any Provincial Assembly that they should be burdened with all the evils being created so far. Sindh Education Minister declared the teachers guilty for the ‘destroyed education’. It means that all others are innocent. It is the bad luck of the Teachers that each one of society is with the powerful and no one is revealing the real truth.

            Thanks to the Supreme Court of Pakistan first for declaring the NOTORIOUS law NRO as illegal and unconstitutional and then for showing more than 8000 persons who used the soap of NRO for washing their dirt but they could not and are still struggling right from their President of Pakistan down to a lower officer to stop the process of implementation.

            It cannot be said that the persons outside the net of NRO are angels. Each one has fully tried his best to use his influence for his benefit and that is why everyone is opponent of honest accountability.

            The Government instead of cutting its non-development expenditures tries to cut the throats of the masses by imposing new taxes or increasing the ratios of the existing taxes. The resignation of former Finance Minister Mr. Shaukat Tarin first from the Federal Cabinet and then from the Senate indicates that the Government was not in the mood of adopting his austerity measures. It is strange a phenomenon that first a person is brought with much honour and given all the powers but at the end, he is removed with much humiliation. It means that there are extraordinary strange powerful forces in the Country which do not want to be exposed but they wish to control everything.

            The teachers will have to unite as one group in the whole country and should nominate retired teachers in the election for the National and Provincial Assemblies in the whole Country. They should not vote to anyone except their own retired teacher contesting the election. In this way they would gain enough force gradually in the Country.

            When in America, a black person can become the President, in Pakistan teachers also can become a political force subject to the condition of persistent struggle. The beauty of democracy is that in this system, the docile have no place. Each one will have come out if they wish to gain. Those who are in numerical strength would rule the Country subject to having no room for unnecessary compromises. One “NO” of the Chief Justice changed the essence of the Judiciary. But before saying this “NO”, the Chief Justice was fully aware of the repercussions which are still continuous despite the resignation of General Musharraf. What the Politicians did in the 18^th Amendment with the Judiciary is now under discussion in the Supreme Court.

            The elected/non-elected heads of the political parties were made “bosses” of the parties and elected persons in the parties were relegated to nonentities. Thus the ultimate sovereigns are not the people who properly vote a person but the elected/non-elected heads of the respective political parties. What democracy? And how it is strengthened?

            A handful of lawyers got united under the leadership of the Chief Justice Mr. Iftikhar Muhammad Choudhry and achieved recognition in the World. Similarly, if the teachers wish to be recognized then they will have to unite on the Country level.

            At present, no one is raising slogan for their cause, each one is busy in his own benefit but when they would reach they would give benefit to their community in a better way along with other people. It is expected that the teachers would do according to the norms of justice as they are doing at present.

            As I have already said that the protest of the teachers should dignified. They should not let the law-enforcing agencies to beat them. Actually the big ones have trained and dressed these poor persons to defend them and their exploitative system. The ultimate sufferer is the poor—either in the uniform or without uniform. The poor in the uniform is bound to shoot or beat the poor without uniform for the sake of his salary.

            Late Maulana Abul Ala Maududi, had said that when the train goes in the wrong direction, the passengers cannot reach to their destination. The need is to correct the direction of the train. The same is the case here. If the teachers or other aggrieved persons wish to correct the system they will have to contest the election according to their own name and not under the banner or party of any feudal lord, Sardar, Khan, Nawab.

            How MQM got the present status is another topic for discussion but they achieved their own specificity. They become partner in Government with every party who is in the position to form the Government and then play a dominant role in the Government.

Manzoor Ahmad Yousafzai

Sunday, May 30, 2010

A protest drive by government school teachers in Sindh has left educational activities in a number of the province’s districts paralysed for the past several days. The teachers are demanding benefits and allowances granted to educators in the other three provinces which, they say, the Sindh government is not willing to extend to them. Teachers say a summary prepared by a government committee for the grant of benefits has been rejected by the chief minister. The government says the summary is under consideration.

 Protests have been staged in various towns and cities across the province, including at the Bhutto mausoleum in Garhi Khuda Bakhsh. However, matters took a nasty turn when the protesting teachers clashed with police in Karachi on Thursday. The police resorted to tear-gas shelling and a baton charge to keep the teachers away from Governor’s House, where they wanted to deliver a memorandum to the governor. On Wednesday, the provincial education minister had criticised the teachers’ associations, for their protest drive, in the Sindh Assembly, saying they had “destroyed education”. He claimed that half the teachers do not show up to take classes, adding that the devolution of the education department to the city and district governments was responsible for the sorry state of education in the province.

In this tug-of-war between the government and teachers, the children of Sindh are suffering the most. Teachers’ representatives have said the protests will continue till the summer vacations and may carry on after the holidays. This is a grim prospect. Educators have every right to peacefully protest and pursue their demands, but this should not be at the cost of children’s education.

A compromise between both sides must be reached. Both the teachers and the government equally share the responsibility of improving the quality of education in Sindh. On the teachers’ part, securing benefits without improving their performance and standards is a questionable goal. On the government’s end, putting the blame for the rot in the education system on past governments will not solve the issue. Concrete measures need to be taken by all stakeholders to improve the falling standards of education in Sindh’s public schools.

Manzoor Ahmad Yousafzai