KARACHI: Hundreds of junior schoolteachers protesting against non-payment of their monthly salaries blocked traffic on M.A. Jinnah Road for half an hour on Thursday.

Holding placards and chanting slogans against the education department, the employees initially staged a demonstration in the education department`s Reform Support Unit (RSU) but later decided to take to the streets after receiving no official response. The protesters told Dawn that they were appointed under a World Bank project through a test conducted by the National Testing Service (NTS) a year ago. But none of them had received their monthly salaries for the past year.

`How could one survive withoutan income? It has been one whole year and not a single month`s salary has been given to us during this period,` complained a teacher posted in Malir`s Jaffar Tayyar Society.

He added only the teachers appointed in Karachi faced the issue, while those posted in other districts received their remuneration.

Many participants said they were in debt as they had to borrow money to survive this year. Some of them regretted that they had quit a private job only to get appointed as a government schoolteacher. `I left a Rs35,000 job at a private school because the administration used to cut my salary on one excuse or the other. Now working for a year without an income has made me regret my decision.

At least I was getting a salary earlier to run my house,` said ateacher posted in a Saddar school.

Another teacher appointed in Jamshed town said: `I am married, with three children and lived in a rented house with my parents and a mentally challenged brother. You can imagine how hard it would have been for me to run my house in these conditions. I am taking private tuitions but that amount is not enough to meet daily expenses.

In reply to a question about complaints, they said officials gave them repeated assurances but without any positive outcome.

According to the protesters, no specific amount for salary had been mentioned in their appointment letters. They said they were told that they would receive the grade-14 employee salary that they said was around Rs20,000 a month.

Upon contact, RSU project manager Faisal Ahmed Ugaili, whorecently took charge, said that three more weeks were required to release the dues.

He said: `Salaries have been delayed in Karachi because there were some issues over jurisdiction of the schools.

`The project was union councilbased but the boundaries of UCs were found to be overlapping with those of towns.

An approval in this regard, he said, had been taken from the World Bank and a process was under way to release salaries.

A total of 15,700 school teachers, he said, were hired under the project across Sindh.

Of them, 959 were junior schoolteachers appointed for Karachi.

The teachers were hired on a threeyear contract and their services would be regularised after a due procedure, he said.