Excelsior Correspondent
JAMMU, Jan 18: Castigating the State Government for paying no heed to the plights of School lecturers engaged on Academic Arrangements, scores of such lecturers assembled today under the banner of ‘All J&K Contractual Lecturers (10+2) Forum’ at Exhibition Ground Jammu and took out a protest march.
As the police did not allow them to move further and stopped the protesters at Dogra Chowk, the agitating teachers raised anti-Government slogans and demanded immediate regularization of their services.
Seeking implementation of apex court’s decision of ‘equal pay for equal work’ in J&K, Abhimanyu Sharma, a contractual lecturer, said that engagement of Ph D, M.Phil and double post graduates as lecturers for negligible emoluments of Rs 7000 per month as against Rs. 45000 for their counterparts in regular establishment, despite the same nature of work, was highly discriminatory and amounted to worst form of human rights violation. He said that the lecturers who were made to work at lesser wage did not do so voluntarily but did so to provide food and shelter to their family at the cost of their self respect and dignity. He added that the contractual lecturers were rendering their services in the schools ranging from 5 to 15 years and several of them had been terminated by the Government after exploiting them for more than a decade.
Gurjeet Singh, another contractual lecturer, sought framing of a suitable regularization policy and inclusion of such lecturers within the ambit of Special Regularization Provisions Act of 2010.
According to Sangeeta Sambyal, another contractual lecturer, several lecturers engaged on academic arrangement in hilly and remote areas had shown reluctance to join services in view of negligible emoluments offered to them and as such the majority of Schools had become defunct and staff deficient.
Others, who spoke on the occasion, included Vinod Kumar, Rajni Jamwal, Asha Pathania, Kanchan Bala, Shakeel, Randeep, Balwinder, Bablu Kumar, Seema Kumari, Vijay Sharma, Kiran Bala and Reva Rani.
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