ISLAMABAD - It is a laudable on the part of ministry of planning & development to conceive idea of "Pakistan Vision 2025 and 11th Five Year Plan (2013-18)" but during the national consultation conference no planning was seen while selecting audience as mostly female teachers filled up the seats of Convention Centre.
Like most other seminars and conferences held by various ministries, the audience were randomly picked in stock from the federal government colleges/ model colleges for women merely for crowding the conference hall on Friday. What is more interesting and ridiculous that teachers in question were neither told well before that they would be the forced audience to clap in response to the promising announcements that the Prime Minister would make to the gathering, nor they were informed what the core agenda for the conference was in place so that they should have gone through various relevant references.
Moreover, this sudden announcement on part of the capital administration & development division (CADD)/federal directorate of education (FDE) put the female teachers in difficult situation because they could not take their families into confidence. They were just shoved into the buses and delivered at the Convention Centre where security check-up was awaiting them for further embarrassment and fatigue. Had sanity and wisdom prevailed in the CADD and FDE, it should have talked to the professors who one way or the other are connected to the disciplines of planning, and development, and sustainable development so that they should themselves come up with suggestions and practical participation.
"The female teachers are sent to Convention Centre with a motive to fill in the seats. They are never told or briefed about conferences and seminar. I fail to understand how CADD/FDE could ignore the fact that this conference should have been attended by the teachers and professors that have understanding and academic qualification pertaining to the issues of planning and development," said one of the female teachers that attended the conference.
­Prof Tanveer Zehra, senior FGCTA VP, said teachers are given least importance: their just demands are thrown into waste basket, their issues have been put at the back -urner .