Community schoolteachers without salaries for one year

CHITRAL: A large number of basic education community schools (BECS) have been opened in Chitral under the National Education Foundation (NEF). They are imparting basic education to both male and female students from nursery to class 5. These BEC schools were established in 1999 with the purpose to educate adults as well as children to increase literacy ratio. Students of six classes were accommodated in a single rented room which was often without fan, drinking water, toilet, desk, furniture and other basic facilities. Only one female teacher has been posted in each school to teach students from nursery to class 5e. The teachers were first paid rupees 2,000 salary and then it was increased to Rs5,000. However, since 2005 the teachers salaries were not increased. And since October 2010, this monthly honorarium of the teachers has also been stopped and the teachers are working without any pay since then. A teacher, Gul Amina, of Aryan village in southern Chitral, told this scribe that she was teaching more than 40 students in one rented room but her salary had been stopped for the last one year. A student of class 5th, Ayisha said she was very much fond of education and wanted to become a doctor but she along with other students was facing numerous problems. There is no desk, no toilet, no drinking water, no fan, no light and no other facilities. The teachers have appealed to the president, prime minister as well as donor agencies to release the pending salaries of these teachers and provide all basic facilities to the schools.—GH Farooqui