Excelsior Correspondent
—Excelsior/Rakesh
JAMMU, Aug 17: State president, Jammu and Kashmir National Panthers Party Balwant Singh Mankotia today went on 24-hour hunger strike to lodge his protest against the harassment perpetuated on the ReT (Rehbar-e-Taleem) teachers by the State Government.
Several senior NPP leaders including Harshdev Singh and Yash Pal Kundal also joined him at the venue near Press Club for several hours. Talking to media persons Mr Mankotia disclosed that ReT scheme proved to be a panacea for wailing plight of Education Department by providing quality education, increasing literacy rate in the State and raising the standard of education including far-flung areas. Moreover, it helped in minimizing dropout rate and increased enrolment, but it is the sheer irony that the teaching fraternity under the scheme is continuously receiving meager wages and lack of service benefits.
Mankotia added that ReT teachers have also been accorded step motherly treatment by the Government and as well as the concerned department. They are victimized and harassed quite often by issuing unjustified orders/circulars which inflict the dent on the sentiments of these thousands of teachers of the State who have been playing a key role in imparting the school education.
Meanwhile, a deputation of ReT Teachers Forum led by Vinod Sharma, State president and Najam Jafari met the Mr Mankotia and discussed their issues. They informed him that the Government has arbitrarily started the process of verification of degrees of ReTs obtained through distance mode/study centers including the degrees issued by Jammu University, Kashmir University, IGNOU, MANU. They lamented that despite High Court orders to scrutinize the degrees of all general line teachers, masters, lecturers and other employees of Education Department, the Government whimsically ordered the scrutiny of the degrees pertaining to only ReTs and maintained that it has inflicted the dent on the pride and dignity of ReT community. He said the ReTs have been exempted from exam duties and their regularization has also been delayed and they have not been paid the salary for several months pushing their families to starvation.
Others who visited dharna site included Prof Bhim Singh, Harshdev Singh, Yashpal Kundal, PK Ganju, Anita Thakur, Bansi Lal Sharma, Rajinder Singh Jagdev Singh, Paramjit Singh Marshal, Gagan Pratap, Neeraj Gupta and Sham Gorkha.
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