Continuous protest at the District Education Offices (DEO) is likely to disrupt the process of dispatching the newly appointed 12,743 teachers in the community schools across the country.
The three-day-long lockout at the DEOs enforced by the Nepal Educational Republic Forum (NERF) since Wednesday, the first day of the new fiscal year, has disrupted several important works at the DEOs including the dispatch of new teachers, officials have said. The Teacher´s Service Commission (TSC) had already announced that the process of dispatching the teachers would begin from the new fiscal year.
Although the three-day lockout protest at the DEOs ended Friday, NERF, a network of 11 various organizations advocating for the rights of teachers, is all set to come up with a new phase of protest at the district and central level to pressure the government into fulfilling its demands, said the NERF Chairperson Hom Kumar Thapa.
The Forum is in protest with various demands such as opening of an internal vacancy for temporary teachers. Similarly, the teachers´ organization has also demanded that none of the teachers hired on contract basis should be made jobless following appointment of new permanent teachers.
“Although the TSC has made new appointments, it should bring a provision to ensure that non-permanent teachers at the community schools do not become jobless,” Thapa added.
Teachers hired under 17 various categories including temporary, contract and relief quota among others, are currently working at community schools across the country. Over 2,200 temporary teachers got permanent status through an open competition a year ago. But NERF said there are over 20,000 more temporary teachers whose fate hangs in balance.
The teachers have also alleged that the DEOs supply false information to the TSC regarding the number of vacant seats at community schools. "The DEOs usually tell TSC that fewer seats are vacant so that the former could appoint substitute teachers arbitrarily,” claimed Chairman Thapa.
Apart from this, NERF also wants the government to set the salary scale for teachers on par with the civil servants. “The government has long been treating teachers unfairly in terms of paying the salaries, and it continued the discrimination in the new budget as well,” Thapa mentioned.
Likewise, NERF has also asked the government to regulate the private schools and force them to pay teachers salaries on par with community school teachers.
source: republica,20 july 2014
