KARACHI: The Sindh Cabinet has decided to fix the wheat procurement target for crop 2020-21 at 1.4 MMT at a rate of Rs 2000 per 40 kilograms.
Sindh Chief Minister Syed Murad Ali Shah chaired the meeting of the provincial cabinet which was attended by provincial ministers, advisors, chief secretary Mumtaz Shah and concerned secretaries.
The Sindh Food department told the cabinet that currently 800,000 tons of wheat was available with the department. It had procured 1.236 MMT from crop 2019-20 and procured 117,000 tons of imported wheat from the federal government.
The department assured the cabinet that the wheat stock available with it was sufficient till the harvest of the new crop 2020-21, and therefore requested the cabinet to decide the procurement target.
The cabinet thoroughly discussed the matter and decided that the support price would be Rs 2000 as was decided earlier and 1.4 MMT wheat would be procured in the next procurement season starting from next month.
The cabinet also allowed the food department to purchase Bardana bags to the extent of the assigned target at the ratio of 80 percent PP bags and20 percent jute bags.
The cabinet, keeping in view the shortage of teaching staff, approved the proposal of recruitment of around 37,000 teachers in the next three years. A sub-committee has been constituted to review recruitment policy 2021 for teaching and non-teaching staff in the education department.
The committee submitted its recommendations suggested that the minimum prescribed qualification for Primary School Teachers shall be graduation in the second division. The post of PST (BS-09) may be upgraded to BS-14 for initial recruitment in view of upgradation of qualification from intermediate to graduation.
The PST shall remain in primary schools throughout their service. Therefore, service structure may be created for career progression of PSTs instead of allowing them promotion to the post of JESTs/HSTs/SSTs.
For instance, the post of senior primary school teacher (BS-16) and post of head/chief Primary School Teacher BS-17 can be created for promotion of PSTs. Professional qualification shall be made mandatory for recruitment in next rounds.
The recruitment rules for other teaching cadres such as music teacher, Second Language Teacher (SLT), oriental teacher, etc may be revised keeping in view the availability of the specialized qualification holders in the market. The cabinet was told that around 37,000 positions of teachers of different cadres were vacant in the school education department.
