FG teachers unable to pay house rent amid funds shortage

ISLAMABAD: Teachers and non-teaching staff of the Federal Government Colleges are faced with an acute shortage of funds to pay for their term rent for housing.
According to an official source, the budget allocation to disburse every year to the landlords whose houses are on public pool for government employees is set annually. The F.G Colleges, which were already running in deficit, received a reduced amount this year as compared to the previous fiscal year to pay the rental ceiling. The allocated funds were consumed in just six months which put the teachers of these colleges in a very difficult situation.
Funds allocated to meet the rental ceiling of all the 10 Federal Government colleges for the fiscal year 2018-19 was Rs 96765000, whereas it was drastically reduced to Rs 81920000 for the year 2019-20. Islamabad Model Postgraduate College H-8 faced 37.3% reduction in allocation of rental ceiling which is the highest among all the FG Colleges (The College got Rs 13237000 during 2019-20 while it received Rs 18177000 during 2018-19). Islamabad Model College for Boys F-10/4 faced 27.1% reduction and Islamabad Model College for Boys H-9 faced 25.6% reduction in allocated budget of rental ceiling. This huge reduction in the allocation of funds resulted in a chaos as the funds got exhausted in just six months and no funds were available for many teachers beyond December 2019. However, Islamabad Model colleges did not face any reduction. All the 20 Model Colleges got a little more than previous year. They received Rs 184453000 in 2019-20 while during the year 2018-19, they got Rs 178784000. “The recent COVID-19 situation has brought this issue to all time worst; landlords are now pushing the tenants to either vacate the houses or pay them from their (teachers’) personal resources. There is nobody to listen to our miserable plight,”complained Professor AmjadAwan. – Agencies