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Teachers boycott pre-primary classes, seek regularisation

JALANDHAR: Teachers recruited under the Education Guarantee Scheme (EGS), Alternative Inclusive Education (AIE) and Special Trainers (STR) and other contractual teachers across the state have announced to boycott pre-primary classes.

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Avneet Kaur

Jalandhar, February 20

Teachers recruited under the Education Guarantee Scheme (EGS), Alternative Inclusive Education (AIE) and Special Trainers (STR) and other contractual teachers across the state have announced to boycott pre-primary classes.

The teachers said they had been demanding regular posts for pre-primary teachers under the state Education Department since long, but the government was not paying attention to their pleas.Till the state government accommodate the contractual teachers and volunteers in the pre-primary classes, none of the volunteer or teacher would take pre-primary classes in the state.

Swarna Rani, a member of the EGS AIE /STR Teachers’ Union, said: “There are over 7,800 teachers serving in various government primary schools in the state and they are drawing a meagre salary of Rs 5,000 per month. These teachers have been rendering services for the past many years. We demand that the state government must regularise them and accommodate them in pre-primary classes started under the Parho Punjab Parhao Punjab project.”

She said though the state government is paying only Rs 5000 as salary to the teachers, they had been asked to work double than regular teachers. The EGS volunteers, besides teaching and taking care of pre-primary children, are also carrying out surveys of students in their respective villages.

Another teacher Nishant from Kapurthala said, “Many government primary schools falling in the remote areas do not have any regular teacher and are being solely managed either by education providers or EGS-AIE volunteers, but despite that the government had no plan to accommodate us in pre-primary classes as permanent teachers.”

He said: “The government should realise that meagre salaries of education providers and EGS teachers are the major drawbacks in providing quality education at rural schools.”

The teachers said the file of EGS volunteers, prepared by the Education Department about a year ago to present before the Cabinet for their regularisation, was lying unattended so far.

They added that they would also not participate in the ongoing enrolment campaign of the Education Department as the work of campaigning and seeking admissions belong to the permanent teachers.

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