Meeting with Chief Minister postponed for third time

Avneet Kaur

Jalandhar, June 22

The meeting of various teachers unions to be held with the Chief Minister (CM) has been postponed for the third consecutive time.

The meeting was earlier scheduled for June 4, June 19 and then June 23.

Having held many protests, boycotted the Parho Punjab Project, the teachers had taken up the cudgels against the Education Department after a series of department team officials were disallowed by them from entering their school premises. The Education Department had issued notices to them about two months ago for stalling the smooth course of government works. Meanwhile, earlier the meeting was fixed for tomorrow after getting postponed twice, firstly to June 4 and then June 19. But now the meeting has been cancelled for even tomorrow and the next date has not been fixed. The prime demands which the teacher union head plans to take up with the CM on Saturday include the regularisation of services of the contractual teachers, who are presently getting Rs 5,000 per month and the cancellation of the seven-year transfer policy.

Jaswinder Singh Sidhu, an activist of the manch, said, “By postponing the dates, the CM cannot ignore our demands. The government at the meeting held on April 27 promised us to solve our issues. We are looking forward to a positive decision from the CM soon.”

“In case our demands are not met, we will be left with no option but to hold protests,” he added.

The regularisation of contractual teachers was on top in the list of the election manifesto of the Congress during the Assembly polls. They had promised to regularise the teachers who were appointed during the SAD-BJP regime on a contractual basis. Also, the 2019 General Elections are approaching and in case the teachers are not regularised, we won’t vote for the Congress again, said Nishant Kumar, another activist.