The education department in Dera Bugti has drawn criticism on two fronts this week ; over hundreds of teaching posts that have disappeared from the new provincial budget, and over an official order deploying women teachers for polio duty that a youth organisation and a teachers' association say ignores local sensitivities.

According to a list compiled by the District Education Officer (DEO) for South Dera Bugti, 221 sanctioned posts of the education department across the district were not carried over into the 2026-27 budget book. The DEO has formally asked the provincial School Education Department to restore them, warning that regular employees occupying those posts may otherwise be left without salaries.

The shortfall runs across dozens of schools, with the deepest cuts in the Sui and Dera Bugti sub-divisions, where department records show sanctioned strength in some education offices almost halved between the 2025-26 and 2026-27 budgets.

The issue surfaced alongside a separate notification issued by the School Education Department on 31 July, lifting a long-standing ban on transfers and postings within North and South Dera Bugti after what it called a "rationalisation exercise." Under the order, District Education Officers may now fill only vacant posts within their own districts, or make mutual adjustments, without creating surplus staff in any school.

Leaders of APCA Dera Bugti, a government-employees' association, said they had taken the matter up with provincial finance and education officials. The association's district president, Noor Muhammad Bugti, and general secretary, Abdul Rehman Bugti, blamed the loss on education officers who, they said, failed to submit the required lists of posts on time. Posts already dropped from the 2026-27 budget would not be restored, they said; instead, displaced teachers would be adjusted against vacancies created by retirements over the next three years, with no fresh recruitment against them. South Dera Bugti, they added, had been left short of teachers as a result.

The Bugti Youth Organisation (BYO) has gone further, accusing the district administration of repeatedly shortchanging Tehsil Sui in teacher recruitment. Its president, Abdul Ghaffar Bugti, said that under a recruitment phase last year, 18 teaching posts earmarked for Sui had been reduced to just three in the advertised list; when 48 teachers were later recruited, he said, Sui's share still came to only three.

In the latest phase, he said, 15 new posts have been advertised with none allocated to Sui all going instead to Tehsil Phelawagh despite vacancies that exist in Sui, including at a primary school in Pir Muhammad Colony and a post at Killi Jani Khan. These, he alleged, had been deliberately left out of the advertisement, raising questions about the departmental's transparency.

BYO demanded that Chief Minister Mir Sarfraz Bugti cancel the "controversial" advertisement and re-advertise with all vacancies disclosed, so that educated but unemployed young people in Sui could compete for them. It warned that it would raise the issue on "every democratic, legal and public forum" if what it called discriminatory treatment continued.

These are the organisation's characterisations. The education department has not publicly responded, and APCA's account that the missing posts stemmed from paperwork lapses rather than deliberate exclusion offers a different explanation of how the shortfall arose.

The second controversy concerns an order by the Deputy Commissioner (South Dera Bugti), dated 14 July, directing 20 women teachers to report to the District Emergency Operations Centre at the Sui assistant commissioner's office to support a 14-day emergency immunisation drive. The order was issued, it states, after a persistent positive polio environmental sample was detected in Sui.

The concern is not academic , Balochistan has continued to log positive environmental samples even as national figures improve. A province-wide vaccination drive was under way in mid-July.

The Female Teachers Association of Sui objected to the deployment in a written appeal, and BYO took up the issue publicly, saying that assigning women teachers alongside non-familier men during the campaign ran counter to local customs and tribal traditions. Given the large funds allocated to the polio programme, they argued, separate male staff could be engaged so that women teachers are not placed in that position.

Neither the district administration nor the health authorities have publicly responded to the objection.

Published in Balochistan Dispatch, August 1st , 2026