Teachers Welcome Ombudsman's Decision On Rent Assessment Of Residential Buildings

ISLAMABAD, (UrduPoint / Pakistan Point News - 22nd May, 2022 ) :The teachers of the federal government colleges have welcomed the decision of Federal Ombudsman on rent assessment of residential buildings as per entitlement.

According to an official source, a complainant and a lecturer at Islamabad Model Postgraduate College H-8, Mr. Shahid Nadeem got relief from the office of Federal Ombudsman as the rent of his house assessed by the authorities was below his entitlement.

The rent assessment committee of Federal Directorate of Education (FDE) and Ministry of Federal Education and Professional Training (MOFEPT) assessed the rent of his house at Rs. 30,000 while the rental ceiling of the lecturer was Rs. 41147.

In response to the complaint of Mr Shahid Nadeem, Federal Ombudsman took notice of the case and after investigating the case concluded that the authorities wrongly assessed the rent which is to be revised to�Rs 41147.

Talking to APP, President of Federal Government College Teachers Association (FGCTA) Dr. Rahima Rahman said, "As part of a common practice of creating complications in simple procedures and laid down SOPs, the teachers have to sue the FDE in the court of law for seeking justice on simple questions of daily work. Shahid Nadeem was entitled to be granted a rental ceiling of Rs 41147 but he was mistreated and his ceiling was fixed at Rs.30000 arbitrarily and ostensibly on some assumptions which were not part of any book." "We, the office bearers of FGCTA, tried our best to convince the authorities that the teacher was being deprived of his genuine right but all of our efforts were to no avail.

Finally, the teacher was left with no other choice than suing the case in Federal Ombudsman. The Federal Ombudsman could find no evidence of the treatment being given to the teacher. This decision came up in the favour of the teacher and embarrassment to the authorities but question arises how long shall the teachers keep on moving the courts for trivial ordinary procedures and daily routine matter? Commenting on this state of affairs, Senior Vice President of FGCTA, Farhan Azam expressed his displeasure and urged the authorities to respect the teaching community and avoid complicating the simple procedures. It does only not waste valuable time and energy of teachers but also makes the whole education system suffer.

General Secretary, Dr Nazir Ahmed criticized the discriminatory policy of the authorities which has offered far more viable and swift hiring process to other department but the teachers under the umbrella of the FDE have to wait for ages to get their hiring ceiling released to the home owners.

It is a constant mess ever since the time immemorial, he lamented. We have been demanding to make the hiring as part of the salary to resolve this issue once for ever but government authorities do not pay heed to our miseries. If hiring is not made part of the salary, it should at least be made speedy, he remarked.

From the narrative of the lecturer who has sought justice from Federal Ombudsman, a female teacher who has not been paid rent for a long time said, it seems all the teachers must enroute their applications through Federal Ombudsman, for every concern, she said sarcastically.���/395