Staff Reporter
Federal Directorate of Education (FDE) is striving hard to improve official business and remove all hurdles to ensure effective service delivery for all its employees by addressing their long pending issues.
A senior official of the FDE while talking to Lead Pakistan said the FDE being the regulator of 424 government schools and colleges in Islamabad and more than 15,000 employees (Teaching and Non-teaching is facing a number of issues such as centralization of power, shortage of staff, in-adequate resources in schools, delay in processing pension cases/death cases, long pending promotion cases, unnecessary delay in processing case for revision of 4-tier structure of school cadre, recruitment rules of schools cadre contrary to fundamental right of existing staff, unjustified distribution of funds to schools/colleges, deficiency of budget under hiring, and above all absorption of the staff on deputation in its various schools.
However, in a recent development by the Government an experienced educationist Ms Zia Batool is posted as Director General. All stakeholders including Head of institutions, teachers, Federal Government Head Association, Federal Government Teachers Association and Non-teaching association appreciated the step of the government for posting an experienced Educationist having vast experience in the field of Education.
FGHA and FGTA have jointly welcomed the decision of Ministry of Federal Education and Professional Training regarding posting of Zia Batool as Director General and expressed the hope that under the visionary leadership of Federal Minister, Ministry of Federal Education and Professional Training Shafqat Mahmood and DG FDE Zia Batool long pending issues will be resolved.
They also expressed their relief over transferring the former DG who was least aware as well as interested in resolving the problems of the FDE staff.
FGHA and FGTA also brought to the notice of Director General that as per the 4-tier promotion formula, prescribed ratio 1:15:34:50 percentage of the teachers in BPS 20, 19, 18, 17 respectively. However, with the up-gradation of teachers in B-17 in 2011, the symmetry of their service structure was jumbled up which need to be rectified, for which revision of 4-tier is an important activity.
On the other hand, teachers are deprived of their right despite lapse of 9 years which is source of demoralizing the staff. In addition, cases of promotions are held since long beside controversial recruitment rules designed without the consultation of stakeholders blocked the promotion of existing staff.
Due to the disordered service structure, most of teachers of FDE hardly get promotion; therefore, they are reaching their superannuation and stuck in the same grade, which is demoralization teaching community.
In a recent letter regarding delegation of power issued on 20-08-2020, Ms Zia Batool, Director General delegated various powers to Director, Deputy Director, Area Education Officer and head of the institutions in order to facilitate staff for prompt disposal of their matters. The education experts said that the recent development regarding delegation of power and streamlining business of FDE by the sitting Director General (Ms Zia Batool) will help in resolving long pending issues and change the culture to provide facilitative environment to the employees so that all staff can perform their duties dedicatedly.
Previously, two directors were looking after matters pertaining to around 16,000 employees that caused delay in processing of cases and always been voiced by teachers and non-teaching community. However, in recent development, work load is distributed among section and instructions are issued by the DG to facilitate employee and processing of cases within timeline. An officer of FDE expressed that this is the first time that efforts are made to facilitate the employees and delegate the power.
