No work but teacher training institutes in KP eat up Rs1bn.

Byline: Mohammad Ashfaq

PESHAWAR -- Khyber Pakhtunkhwa's 21 regional institutes for teacher education have eaten up around Rs1 billion during the last two years despite an end to its only job of pre-service teacher training in 2016.

The government had done away with the condition of RITE training for appointment as teacher in 2016 but over 600 employees of the institutes continue to draw salary, sources told Dawn.

They said 300 of those employees held BPS 17-20 positions.

The sources said after the abolition of the pre-service training, the government had appointed untrained teachers and provided them with training thereafter.

They said the RITEs used to offer two-year training in associate degree in education (ADE) and one year in drawing master, while their annual salary and non-salary budget totaled around Rs500 million.

CM adviser says RITEs to be abolished

The sources said since the condition of professional degrees in teaching was not necessary for the teachers' appointment, the elementary and secondary education department had decided to abolish the RITEs considering them to be a burden on kitty.

They said the Provincial Institute for Teacher Education (PITE) provided the required on-job training to teachers.

'All staff members come to the institute just for marking attendance as they have no duty to perform,' one of the RITE heads told Dawn. He said as directed by the elementary and secondary education department, the RITEs had stopped enrolling candidates for training since 2017.

'We have no training programme and often learn from newspapers that the government is going to abolish RITEs,' he said.

The elementary and secondary education department had moved a summary to the provincial restructuring committee some seven months ago for approval to abolish RITEs with valid reasons, sources...