ISLAMABAD, Feb 21: After doctors, nurses and paramedical staff; now non-teaching daily wage employees in 423 educational institutions of the federal capital have decided to take to the streets for confirmation of their jobs and pay increase.

The employees, who have been working under the Federal Directorate of Education (FDE) for the last 10 to 18 years, staged a sit-in in front of National Press Club for over six hours on Tuesday.

Talking to Dawn, Sadaqat Abbasi, Abdul Jalil and others said about 450 of the daily wage employees were working in model schools and colleges and 150 in the federal government institutions.

They added: “According to the law, our minimum salary should not be less than Rs8,000 but the administrations of the schools pay us Rs4,000 to Rs5,000. The amount is released from the student fund, so they do not consider it salary and claim that the law of the minimum wage does not apply on us.”

They said for the last 15 years they had been listening that sooner or later services of all daily wagers would be regularised but no one has ever bothered to look into the issue of the non-teaching staff working in grade 1 to 16.

Prime Minister Syed Yousuf Raza Gilani had announced in 2011 that all contractual employees would be regularised, they said, adding: “We were expecting that the democratic government would regularise our services but now it seems that only those appointed on political grounds were to be benefited.”

After the announcement by Mr Gilani, two notifications were issued in 2011 confirming over 160 employees but all of them were those who had been appointed in 2009 and 2010. On the other hand, those who have been working for the last almost two decades are still awaiting regularisation of their services,” they said.

The employees said they contacted heads of the educational institutes who conveyed their concerns to the ministry in the past and later to Capital Administration and Development Division (CADD) but without any result.

They decided that if a notification for regularisation of their services was not issued within the next 48 hours, they would stage another sit-in which would continue till acceptance of their demands.

When contacted, Director General FDE Atif Kiyani said a meeting held at CADD on Tuesday decided that services of all daily wage employees, including those appointed before January 29, 2011, would be regularised and in this regard a case would be moved to the Cabinet Division within the next five days.

(Dawn News)

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