Teachers from across state protest, demand salaries

Demanding the release of their long-pending salaries, regularisation of jobs and implementation of regular pay scales, teachers from various districts of Punjab gathered in Ludhiana and protested against the state government on Sunday.

The teachers were covered different government schemes like Sarva Shiksha Abhiyaan (SSA), Rashtriya Madhyamik Shiksha Abhiyan (RMSA) and Centrally Sponsored Scheme (CSS). They took out their protest from Dana Mandi to Mini-Secretariat.

The teachers under CSS were particularly agitated as their salaries have not been released for the past one year.

Deedar Singh, president, Teachers' Union Punjab, under whose leadership the 6-km-long protest march was carried out, said, "The government is simply not listening to our pleas, and they cannot even imagine how a teacher runs his/her home without salaries. We want the state government to immediately act on our list of demands."

He added that despite meetings with the chief minister and the other authorities on March 2 this year where they were promised fulfilment of their demands like inclusion of CSS teachers under the Education Department within a week and formation of a policy to regularise SSA/RMSA teachers in 15 days, the teachers in actual had got nothing but just promises.

The teachers also demanded implementation of regular pay scales for SSA/RMSA primary and upper primary teachers from the beginning of financial year 2013-14.

Withdrawal of cases against 59 teachers during Bathinda protest in 2012 and six-month maternity leave are among the other main demands of the teachers.

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