Teachers’ meeting with CM put off again

Avneet Kaur

Jalandhar, June 18

The meeting of various teacher unions to be held with the Chief Minister (CM) has been postponed for the second time to June 23. The meeting was earlier scheduled for June 4 and then June 19.

Teachers said the CM had not yet passed any order and failed to take any action regarding his promise to regularise their jobs.

Teachers of government schools, under the banner of “Sarkari Sikhya Bachao Manch”, have decided to hold a series of protests if their demands were not met at the earliest. Adamant on their demands to regularise the contractual employees’ services and do away with the seven-year transfer policy, the teachers said, “If both these demands are not met and the CM does not pass any order in our favour, we will step out on roads and fight till our demands are met.”

Jaswinder Singh Sidhu, an activist of the manch, said, “Many teachers under the manch previously boycotted the ‘Parho Punjab, Parhao Punjab’ project in order to show rage against the government and its policies. The government at the meeting held on April 27 promised us to solve our issues. We are looking forward for a positive decision from the CM.”

“In case our demands are not met and the date of the meeting further postponed, we will be left with no other option but to hold protests,” he added. The regularisation of contractual teachers was on the top in the list of the election manifesto of the Congress during the Assembly polls. They had promised to regularise the teachers who were appointed during the SAD-BJP regime on a contractual basis. However, teachers’ unions started to protest when they apprehended that this government too would not pay any heed to their demands.

Nishant Kumar, another activist, said, “We were asked to appear for the meeting on June 19. Today we received a call from the CM office, informing us that the meeting had been further scheduled to June 23. Our major demand is the regularisation of contractual employees. We will carry out a series of protests if our demands are not met or salaries are reduced by the government.”

“We have submitted suggestions on the rationalisation policy to the Education Department prior to the meeting and Education Minister OP Soni has assured us that our demands would be fulfilled at the earliest,” he added.

Teachers’ demands

• Regularisation of contractual employees
• Dismissal of transfer of teachers after seven years
• Withdrawal of rationalisation policy
• Full pay scale for teachers