Teachers protest govt decision to revoke re-employment

A day after Jammu and Kashmir government terminated services of contractual employees selected without following the set norms, dozens of contractual temporary teachers today staged a demonstration here demanding regularisation of their services.
Carrying placards and shouting slogans, the protesters assembled at the Residency Road in the heart of the city under the banner of Contractual or Temporary Teachers Association to protest the government decision and highlight their demand for continuation of their services and absorption in the education department.
However, the protesters were chased away by police and some of them including women teachers were taken into preventive custody to maintain law and order, officials said.

"We were engaged by the previous government under a cabinet order last year. We were selected among 60,000 applicants against clear vacancies on the basis of merit," Divisional President of the association Kaiser Yousuf Ganai told reporters.
He said they gave up other assignments and joined the education department with a hope that they would be absorbed like contractual teachers appointed in 2006. "It was for this reason that we worked on meagre wages of Rs 100 a day or Rs 3000 per month."
Making an appeal to the government, Ganie said there are thousands of vacancies where the services of temporary teachers could be extended to improve standard of teaching in the schools and at the same time curb unemployment.

In a bid to rid the state from the scourge of nepotism and rejuvenate administration, Chief Minister Mufti Mohammad Sayeed yesterday ordered with immediate effect, the termination of all those employees granted re-employment by various government departments.
The chief minister also ordered that engagements or arrangements made by the different departments or public sector undertakings or boards or autonomous bodies under any scheme against any sanctioned posts without any selection procedure, even on contractual basis, shall also cease to exist with immediate effect.