LARKANA: Sindh’s Sen­ior Min­is­ter for Educa­tion Nisar Ahmed Khuhro on Wednesday said 10,000 to 15,000 new teachers would be recruited in the wake of an advertisement to be publicised within a month or two in the province.

Addressing a ceremony where 404 appointment orders were distributed among the successful candidates who had qualified the National Testing Service (NTS) examinations, he said merit was strictly observed.

He categorically denied the impression that any kind of favourtism was observed in giving jobs.

With the distribution of the 404 appointment orders in the ceremony held at Sir Shahnawaz Bhutto Memo­rial Library, recruitment of 17,000 school teachers was completed in Sindh.

“We cannot tolerate more to hear about the closed schools,” he said and urged the selected candidates to serve sincerely because they had to compete with other provinces in education. He asked teachers for regularity, punctuality and sincerity with the job so that the rest of the closed schools in the province could be made operational.

“Within a year or so, we have succeeded in re-opening 1,687 closed schools”, but in the same breath added that collective efforts of all stakeholders were required to make 3,600 closed schools functional in the province.

“We have framed laws to ensure education for the children falling in the age bracket from six to 16 years in the province”, he said and pointed towards awarding 20 bonus marks to the passed women teachers with the sole aim of encouraging girls education.

He asked teachers for making up their mind to serve for three years at the first place of posting and advised them not to indulge in applying any influence for transfer. He said the Sindh education department in Lar­kana division alone spent more than Rs80 million on salaries.

Out of 17,000 recruited primary, secondary and high school teachers, the salaries of 10,000 teachers would be released within a couple of months. He linked the delay in payments to completing ‘formalities’.

The minister asked the officers concerned to expedite the process of salaries and disclosed that a study was being done to give allowances to the teaching faculty serving in remote areas.

Loadshedding

In a meeting with the officials of the Sukkur Electric Power Supply Company (Sepco), a host of electricity consumers critcised the power utility for unscheduled load shedding and issuing high inflated power and detections bills.

In the presence of Sindh Senior Minister for Educa­tion Nisar Ahmed Khuhro and the Larkana deputy commissioner, they alleged that Sepco employees were involved in power theft.

Nisar Khuhro had called a meeting of Sepco officials, including their CEO, where local PPP leaders and consumers were also invited to sort out the issue of prolonged power outages and other electricity-related issues on Wednesday.

After extensive discussion, it was decided that six hours load shedding would be obser­ved on anti-blast cable (ABC) feeders and four hours load shedding on other feeders in Larkana.

Committees were also constituted to look after the issues in 11 union councils of the city.

They also discussed the issues of load shedding, over billing, detection bills and ‘kunda system’. Mr Khuhro asked Sepco for observing six hour load shedding in the city as per the orders of the prime minister.

Larkana city PPP general secretary Aslam Shaikh accused Sepco of sending detection bills to the consumers in Sachal colony where ABC was laid down from which stealing electricity was almost impossible.

The residents of Baharpur alle­g­ed the meter readers for ‘false’ reading as they seldom visited the area.

They called for discontinuing the practice. Haroon Hulio of Allah Abad locality said that despite enough recovery from the area, “we are experiencing 16 to 18 hour load shedding”.

CEO Farmanullah Pathan said four feeders were switched over to ABCs where six hour load shedding was being observed while on the rest of the feeders where losses were higher and recovery was less, the power utility was observing 12 to 16 hours load shedding.

Published in Dawn, April 16th, 2015

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