BISE Lahore chairman & corrupt staff

BISE chairman bashed for not replacing 'corrupt staff'
Lahore, July 26: Several officials from the computer department of the Board of Intermediate and Secondary Education (BISE), engaged in preparing the upcoming Intermediate result, condemned the BISE chairman for not replacing some corrupt officials of the department who are said to be involved in tampering the results with the help of some BISE personnel, learnt on Saturday.

BISE officials said that the corruption of these officials was fully exposed through the mistakes in last year's result. "BISE Chairman Akram Kashmiri is supporting these corrupt officials", they said, adding that the chairman wrongfully placed the entire blame on computer programming for the mistakes in last year's results, just to save his own skin.

BISE officials said they had been constantly protesting against the computer programmer involved in corruption, and the BISE chairman, acceding to their demands, had promised to replace the programmer, however, he was now hesitating to do so as per instructions of the corrupt higher officials.

The officials said that other higher officers in case of an inquiry, cover the corrupt staff at lower levels, and corruption thus spreads within the institution's Intermediate Branch.

They said that large-scale tampering could be done with the Intermediate results this year because no action had been taken against corrupt staff, and sadly, the future of 265,000 students was at stake. According to the BISE officials, corruption in examinations was also exposed in the recent matriculation and Intermediate examinations and many senior BISE officials were accused of appointing fake examiners and supervisors at the examination centers. BISE Public Relations Officer Qaiser Virk said that they could not replace the computer programmer without a proper inquiry, as he is a government employee. Daily times

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School teachers 'more equal than' lecturers
Lahore: Chief Minister Shahbaz Sharif's formal policy announcement of regularising the services of lecturers, who complete five-year contract service, has not served as a breath of fresh air for many college teachers.

The higher education department has its own requirements to regularise lecturers' services that include three results showing higher pass percentage than the overall pass percentage of results produced by the board and university concerned – besides completion of five-year contract service. This is in contrast to the policy observed by this government's school education department that regularised all contract teachers, serving in BPS-17 and 18, at the stroke of a pen soon after the chief minister announced the regularisation policy.

The department's conditions have made a number of lecturers, including those selected in 2002, a rolling stone affecting their motivation to put in efforts to impart quality education to their pupils.

There are a number of instances, where teachers applied for regularisation on completing five years and they were told that they do not fulfill a higher education department requirement of producing at least three results showing pass percentage over and above the board and university concerned results. Shocked are those teachers, who have no fault of their own.

Of many examples and complaints sent to the higher education department and their representative Punjab College Teachers Association office-bearers, there are cases where principals asked particular teachers to take other subjects' classes as no student of such teachers was available in the college; and teachers who were serving against administrative and non-teaching posts. Such teachers, on completing five-year contract service, have been denied regularisation by the department. The department objected that they did not produce the required results.

To take up a few particular cases, a female physics teacher posted at the Government College for Women, Murree, was asked by her principal to take computer science and English classes as there was no student enrolled to study physics. The teacher taught the two classes and produced good results. Though there were poor results, when a few students were enrolled in physics class, during the last year of her contract service, the college principal sent a detailed recommendation letter to the higher education secretary for teacher's regularisation. However, the recommendation, which, stated that the teacher was highly competent, fell on deaf ears. The teacher was denied regularisation and punished with the extension of her contract service for another five years.

In another case, the higher education department established a college in Chawinda, Sialkot, and the district officer (colleges) directed an English contract lecturer to join the college as a principal as no other regular teacher was there to join the college as principal. So, the lecturer could not "produce results" in terms of his students appearing in board examinations. He was also denied regularisation and his contract service extended.

In yet another case, a college history contract teacher was posted as research officer at Director Public Instruction (Colleges), Punjab, offices. Though she had produced two above education board results in 2006 (96 per cent) and 2007 (100 per cent) examinations, she was also denied extension for not producing three results.

There are also many contract teachers, who have gone to seek higher education (M.Phil and PhD) on their own expense, are also facing the same fate. It is learnt that many a college teachers are still serving on contract, who joined the department in 2002. Many teachers were also denied regularisation as even one of their three results showed only one per cent less than the respective board's overall pass percentage.

As there are many such examples in the higher education department, which does not consider its own shortcomings including almost 40 per cent vacant posts in colleges, the teachers serving on contract will surely refuse assignments given to them other than taking classes of their particular subjects.

Considering this situation, many contract teachers have also dared not to take undergraduate classes in their colleges and purposely taking intermediate classes only to ensure that they get three above education board results as well as get good ACRs for their regularisation.

Punjab higher education secretary Ahad Khan Cheema says the department is considering these issues actively and moving a summary that the teachers, who would produce two desired results, would be regularised. He said the chief minister had already approved a summary, wherein teachers serving against administrative or non-teaching posts had been exempted from producing three results. He said such lecturers would be regularised on the basis of satisfactory ACRs.

The leaders of teachers associations say that the department has no capacity to formulate policies that could serve the need of all teachers. They say the department start amending policies after receiving complaints and consume a lot of time. Meanwhile, the teachers continue to suffer for none of their fault.

Collection information about various issues including study leave, medical leave, NOCs, promotions and regularisation from Punjab civil secretariat, Director Public Instruction and Divisional Directorates has remained a gigantic task for college teachers, says Punjab College Teachers Association (PCTA) president Zafar Khan Jadoon.

Being a witness to this hassle, Mr Jadoon says the newly established PCTA's active members decided to give teachers a helping hand in providing basic information, relevant news stories published in newspapers as well as official forms on the web for their convenience.

For this purpose, the PCTA has launched its website (www.pcta.com.pk) for the benefit of some 18,500 college teachers including over 8,000 female teachers. The website has pages about its constitution, members, contact information, statistics of colleges and faculty members and their grades, links of different related website as well as a page dedicated to news and views.

The website also has a page offering downloadable forms, which were generally required by college teachers but face hardships in getting them.

Visitors to the website come across certain grammatical mistakes. Dawn

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PU MSc physics re-exam
Lahore: The Punjab University Examinations Department has announced that the candidates of MSc Physics, Part-I, will retake their written examination in Paper-III (Quantum Mechanics) on August 2, 2010. The same paper of the candidates, conducted on June 30, 2010, would be treated as cancelled.

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PU drive
Lahore: The City District Government Lahore officials have launched a special drive to eliminate stray dogs from the Punjab University (PU) premises and resultantly over one dozen stray dogs have been killed during the last week.

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UVAS quail plant
Lahore: The University of Veterinary & Animal Sciences (UVAS) is setting up a processing plant for quail meat at a cost of Rs 150 millions which will be ready for production in October this year. This was stated by UVAS Department of Poultry Production's Chairman Prof Dr Muhammad Akram while talking to a delegation of journalists during a visit to the varsity's quail Research and Training Centre. The news

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