Excelsior Correspondent
JAMMU, May 14: Lambasting the Education Department for its failure to make up the deficiency of teaching staff in the remote areas, former minister and chairman of NPP Harshdev Singh expressed grave concern over the paralysed academic activity in such schools and the resultant loss to the student community.
Mr Singh regretted that several schools had become defunct with the Education authorities paying a deaf ear to the repeated demands of staff provision. Making a particular mention of Dudu- Basantgarh zone of district Udhampur, he said that local people along with students of several schools were on protest with the students of HSS Khaned taking out protest rallies for more than 15 days.
Urging upon the Governor N N Vohra to personally intervene, Mr Singh deplored that even the directions of the Chief Minister with regard to cancellation of modifications and attachments were defied and violated with impunity by the officers. In a letter to the Governor, Harshdev called for his personal indulgence so as to stem the rot and to save the Education sector from ruin and disaster. He insisted for strict implementation of transfer policy, check on paid transfers and due cognizance of pre-mature whimsical transfers and provision of adequate staff in rural and far flung area.
The NPP leader pointed out that problem persisted mainly with the Higher Secondary schools in remote areas which faced chronic deficiency of lecturers with several of them having literally become defunct. He said that main reason was the deployment of academic arrangement lecturers in such schools at a merge honorarium of Rs 7,000 per month. He said that the negligible honorarium of Rs 7,000 was fixed around 12 yrs ago and had not been revised thereafter thus forcing such lecturers to quit their assignments. The contractual lecturers had expressed their reluctance to work in difficult areas merely for a pittance and especially in a situation when there was no provision for their regularization.
Seeking the inclusion of contractual and other academic arrangement lecturers under the purview of Special Provisions Act of 2010, the former Education Minister sought the enhancement of emoluments of all such under employed lecturers to a minimum of Rs 25,000. He said that if their counterparts in regular establishment were drawing Rs 45,000 for the same duties, the payment of Rs 7,000 to such contractual lecturers constituted the worst form of exploitation.
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