Primary teachers to cripple hills

Darjeeling, May 5,TT: The Gorkha Primary Teachers’ Organisation has decided to shut down the offices of the education department in the hills for three days next week as part of an intensified agitation programme that is expected to culminate in a general strike on May 31.

As the current government has given no assurance on fulfiling the teachers’ demands, the agitation will be an acid test for the new machinery that will take over by the middle of this month.

The teachers have drawn up a long list of demands, the prominent one being the filling up of the 4,000 vacant posts of primary teachers in the hills.

Some of the other forms of the GPTO agitation (see chart) include an indefinite hunger strike and a three-day dharna in front of the offices of the education department that ended today.

“There has been absolutely no response from the Darjeeling administration. That is why we have decided to close down all education-related government departments for three days starting from May 10 and embark on other forms of agitation, including a 24-hour general strike in the hills on May 31,” said GPTO secretary Bhusan Thapa.

The closure of education departments means there will be no business transaction in the offices of the Sarva Siksha Abhiyan, district inspector of schools and circle inspectors.

“If we do not get any assurance from the administration after the three-day shutdown next week, we will launch a series of strikes,” said Thapa.

The agitators have alleged that no vacancy has been filled up in hill schools after 1997, while 83,774 teachers were appointed in the rest of Bengal last year.

Apart from the appointment of 4,000-odd primary school teachers, the GPTO has raised other demands too.

The organisation wants recognition of primary schools, establishment of a district project office for the Sarva Siksha Abhiyan along with a pension cell in Darjeeling and a medical board for the teachers at Darjeeling Sadar hospital, instead of North Bengal Medical College and Hospital.

The teachers also demanded that a district primary school council be formed in Darjeeling, instead of District School Board, like in other districts, a finance officer be appointed for the District School Board and sub-inspector of schools be posted in all 13 circles in the hills.

Besides, the GPTO also wants the appointment of dealing clerks in the District School Board, early solution of death-in-harness and medical cases, distribution of free text books and smooth implementation of the mid-day meal scheme.

P.T. Sherpa, the secretary of the DGHC’s education department, could not be reached today.

However, he had said earlier that many of the demands related to government policies.

“For example, SIs have not been appointed anywhere in the state. As far as distribution of text books are concerned, there were some technical difficulties,” he said.

Explaining the problem, Sherpa said: “The District School Board had decided to switch over to the CBSE board. But the state government said such a change could not take place overnight and teachers needed to be trained first before they started teaching a new syllabus. That is why there has been a slight delay in the distribution of text books.”