Peshawar teachers protest UNHCR layoffs of 291 colleagues

PESHAWAR: Hundreds of teachers who taught Afghan children in refugee camps for as long as four decades protested in Peshawar on Tuesday against their dismissal by the UN refugee agency, which they called abrupt.

Dawn reported that 291 teachers were laid off on October 31. The group includes 100 men and 191 women. They had taught Afghan children in the camps under the UN High Commissioner for Refugees for 35 to 40 years.

The teachers said the layoffs came without prior notice and without any financial relief, according to Dawn. The dismissals ended classes they had been running in the camps, and the protest in Peshawar followed three days later.

Dawn described the crowd as hundreds of teachers but gave no exact figure. The report did not say which camps the dismissed teachers had worked in, or where in Peshawar the demonstration was held.

Dawn's report carried no response from UNHCR or from the Khyber Pakhtunkhwa government. It did not say whether the teachers were offered severance, or how many children were enrolled in the classes they ran.

Pakistan has hosted Afghan refugees for more than four decades, and Pakistani teachers have staffed the schools inside the camps for most of that period. The 291 laid off this week were among those working under the UNHCR programme, which the teachers say had employed them since the 1980s.

The dismissals leave the camp classes without the teachers who ran them. Dawn's report did not say whether UNHCR intends to replace them or how the gap will be filled.