Strike threat for teacher appointment -- 4000 recruits sought for hill primary schools

Bhanubhakta Primary School and (above) Buddhist Primary School in Darjeeling. Pictures by Suman Tamang

Darjeeling, May 2,TT: An agitation by primary school teachers starting tomorrow may spiral into a hill-wide strike at a time the Assembly elections are on and there is little chance of fulfilling the agitators’ list of demands.

The agitation will start with a dharna for three days from tomorrow for the fulfilment of a slew of demands, including the appointment of more than 4,000 teachers, failing which the teachers have threatened to cripple education in the region.

The main grouse of the Gorkha Primary Teachers’ Organisation that issued the threat was that no new primary schoolteacher had been appointed in the Darjeeling hills since 1997.

“Every year, around 100 teachers are retiring from these primary schools. However, no teachers have been appointed since 1997. Around 12-13 schools have only one permanent teacher each,” said Bhushan Thapa, the secretary of the GPTO.

“While 83,774 teachers were appointed in the rest of Bengal last year, not a single vacancy was filled up in the hills.”

The GPTO, affiliated to the Gorkha Janmukti Morcha, has decided to stage a dharna in front of the DGHC’s education secretary’s office from tomorrow.

“Teachers from Darjeeling, Kalimpong and Kurseong will come in batches and stage a dharna for three days. If things do not work out positively, we will start a teachers’ strike in primary and secondary schools. We will not hesitate to call a general strike in the hills if nothing works out even then,” said Thapa.

The organisation claimed that the 770-odd primary schools across the hills were slowly getting dependent on ad-hoc teachers as no recruitment had been carried out in the past 14 years.

“Education has been completely neglected in the hills,” said Thapa, demanding that 4,000 primary teachers be appointed as early as possible.

The teachers have other complaints as well.

“Free text books have still not been distributed among the students (academic session has started since March) and the mid-day meal is not very regular,” said Thapa.

The other demands of the organisation are recognition of primary schools, and setting up of a district project office for the Sarva Siksha Abhiyan, along with a pension cell in Darjeeling.

The teachers also want establishment of district primary school council, instead of district school board as in other districts, and appointment of a finance officer at the District School Board and sub-inspector of schools in all 13 circles in the hills.

The GPTO demanded that medical board for teachers be set up at Darjeeling Sadar hospital, instead of North Bengal Medical College and Hospital.

P.T. Sherpa, the secretary of the council’s education department, conceded some of the problems.

“Many of the demands raised by the teachers have to do with government policies. For example, SIs have not been appointed anywhere in the state. As far as distribution of text books is concerned, there were some technical difficulties,” he said.

Explaining what he meant by the technical difficulty, 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. This is why there has been a slight delay in the distribution of text books.”