HYDERABAD: The Hyderabad circuit bench of the Sindh High Court on Thursday ordered Sindh secretary of education to investigate and prepare a list of the teachers, who were working in other departments despite being posted in the education department or working as journalists.

The division bench comprising Justices Salahuddin Panhwar and Mohammad Iqbal Maher passed the order on a constitutional petition filed by Azam Khan Hazarvi, a primary school teacher (PST) and 11 other PSTs and two peons posted in government boys primary school in Adil Bhansinghabad in Mirpurkhas.

The bench asked the secretary to immediately prepare a list of such teachers, take action against them within a month and submit a compliance report to the court.

It ordered the secretary to constitute a committee to make inquiries about such teachers. The court gave the order after it surfaced during the hearing that two teachers were unlawfully working as reporters.

It directed Mirpurkhas sessions judge to depute a civil judge or judicial magistrate to conduct a probe within three days to ascertain students’ strength at the school and its performance and submit a report.

The petitioners asked the court to declare the action of the respondent district education officer (DEO), Dr Syed Wajid Ali Shah, to suspend their services as illegal and motivated by personal grudge.

They said the DEO accompanied by taluka education officer (male) visited the school on Aug 5 and introduced himself as a magistrate and his colleague as deputy commissioner.

The DEO used derogatory language against teachers and threatened the head master and the petitioners that the school would be shifted to some other place, they said.

They said that they tried to explain the school was functioning properly with over 600 students enrolled but the DEO kept shouting at them and at one point took out his pistol and threatened them with dire consequences.

Subsequently, he placed them under suspension on Aug 19, they said.

The court noted during the hearing that a large number of students were getting education in the school and the petitioners’ services had been suspended in the wake of a dispute with education officials.

The respondents told the court that they had appointed a new head master, teaching and non-teaching staff in the school but the petitioners were not letting them join their duties.

On that, the petitioners promised that they would not disturb academic activities at the school.

The court further directed the SSP concerned to ensure that no harassment was caused to anybody and observed that an incident had resulted in depriving poor students of their right to education to which the petitioners’ counsel and assistant advocate general (AAG) Ashfaq Nabi Kazi pledged that they would make serious efforts to resolve the controversy in order to ensure smooth functioning of the school.

The court fixed hearing of the case for Nov 2 at 11am and directed that the order be communicated to the secretary and the magistrate concerned to carry out probe into the incident.

Published in Dawn, October 28th, 2016