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Tribune News Service
Srinagar, September 5
Describing teachers as guardians who hold key to the bright future of our generation next, Chief Minister Mufti Mohammad Sayeed today advocated granting financial autonomy to educational institutions and creation of a teachers’ welfare fund on the pattern of the fund set up in the Police Department.
He vowed to make J&K a “knowledge hub” of south Asia and assigned teachers the onerous and challenging task of changing the destiny of our talented youth.
“In the last two-and-a-half decades, we have fought battles on several fronts, but I want you to fight and win this one for making J&K an elite knowledge society,” he said this while congratulating the teaching community on the occasion of Teachers Day at a glittering function at Kashmir University auditorium here today.
Deputy Chief Minister Nirmal Singh and Minister for Education Naeem Akhtar were present on the occasion. Expressing concern over the falling standards in the quality of education, Mufti said the political turbulence of the past more than two decades had taken a toll on the education sector.
“While the rich and affluent could afford to send their children out, the wards of common masses suffered because of turmoil in the state,” he lamented, while praising the swift corrective measures initiated by the Education Department to bring the system back on rails.
He said he was saddened when scams like the BOPEE were unearthed which ruined the future of many brilliant youth. “In my first tenure as the Chief Minister between 2002 and 2005, I strongly resisted requests from the most ardent of my workers. I am what I am today because of my workers. But we detached all those teachers who had conveniently attached themselves to escape postings in the remote and far-flung areas of the state,” he said.
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