Teachers to hold rally on Feb 10

Tribune News Service
Patiala, February 6

Once again, contractual teachers, working under the Samgara Shiksha Scheme, will lay a siege to Patiala on February 10. The decision to hold a state-level protest in Patiala was taken at a meeting of teacher Unions, Sanjha Adhyapak Morcha and Sikhiya Bachao Manch, which was held here today. 

In fact, teachers had earlier planned to carry out a protest march in Amritsar on January 27, but it decided at the meeting to protest in Patiala on February 10. 

“Once again, we will hold a massive protest rally. We have already started preparing for the rally at the level of every district. The government has not fulfilled any of the promises it made. We warn the Congress government that if the authorities don’t heed to our demands, we will make sure that party suffers huge losses in the forthcoming Lok Sabha elections,” said Hardeep Toderpur, co-convener, Sanjha Adhyapak Morcha

However, more than 68 per cent of 8,886 teachers have already accepted the government’s regularisation offer.

Recently, the government had decided to pay the pending five-month salary, one of the demands of the SSA/RMSA teachers, but with a 60 per cent cut.

The Education Department through an official communique had asked District Education Officers to pay Rs 15,000 to primary and Rs 20,000 to the upper primary, which was earlier Rs 37,000 and Rs 42,000, respectively.

“Instead of fulfilling our demands, the state government slashed monthly salary by 60 per cent on the pretext of shortage of funds. But the MHRD, in an RTI reply, informed that they had already released a grant to the government. This clearly shows that the government has been lying to thousands of teachers,” said Bharat Kumar, union leader.