Excelsior Correspondent
JAMMU, May 22: On the call of School Teachers Federation of India (STFI), a number of activists of J& K School Teachers Association (USTA) staged a strong protest against the alleged lackadaisical and callous attitude of Jammu Kashmir UT Government towards the just and genuine long pending demands of the teaching community.
While observing guidelines under COVID-19 and maintaining social distancing, activists of USTA in various districts i.e., Jammu, Kathua , Samba , Reasi , Rajouri , Kishtwar , Ramban etc, raised their demands depicting them on paper posters and stressed the Government to concede the same.
They were demanding release of pay and all other arrears of different categories of teachers, including Head Teachers as well as 20 to 22 months arrears of then ReTs regularised between 2014 to 2017.
They were also demanding PPE and Health insurance to teachers engaged to combat COVID-19 like other frontline workers, withdrawal of DA freeze order, providing subject teachers in all schools, filling up all existing vacancies in the Education Department by way of DPC, regularization of In charge Lecturers , Headmasters , ZEOs and Principals, sparing teachers from all types of non- academic duties, start pre- primary classes in each school with proper infrastructure, implementing norms based transfer policy in the Education Department, send at least 6 percent of GDP on the Education sector and restoration of old pension scheme.
The USTA alleged that teachers have been deployed on extra academic duties at Toll Plaza Lakhanpur to issue passes to trucks entering the UT at the cost of their academic work.
Prominent among those, who took part in the protests included Rajeev Kumar, Hari Singh, Yunus Rahi, Pardeep Singh, Bashir Hussain, Balwant Singh, Roop Chand, Sirajuddin, Raj Kumar, Sunil Kumar and others.
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