Excelsior Correspondent
JAMMU/SRINAGAR, Apr 28: While students were already attending online classes at their homes, teaching and non-teaching staff of schools and colleges across J&K have also started work from home as there is unprecedented spike in number of positive COVID-19 cases and deaths across the Union Territory.
The fresh restriction has now left the premises of many of these institutions deserted.
When contacted, Principal Government Women College Gandhi Nagar, Sangita Nazari said, teaching staff of the College will not attend offices from tomorrow and will conduct online classes from their homes as there is an order today by Secretary Higher Education.
“For non-teaching staff we are worried as many of them are not familiar with online work culture but we will look into this as to what could be done,” she maintained.
Vidyotama Gupta, Principal at Government Higher Secondary School Kotli in district Udhampur said her school remained closed today and she has asked the teachers to conduct online classes from their home.
Quoting higher authorities, Chief Education Officer (CEO) Udhampur, P.D Sharma, who is also holding additional charge of CEO Jammu in a circular stated that all the schools in J&K shall remain close for students and staff due to the rise in COVID-19 cases.
In order, the CEO stated that all the staff members in schools should work from home and no official work should suffer.
“The provisional admission of all the classes should be completed through online mode by creating the Google forms,” the order further mentioned adding that all the heads of institutions should frame time table of all the students for online classes.
Director School Education Jammu, Ravi Shankar when contacted said online classes will be conducted by the teachers and ‘online office’ will keep most of the non-teaching staff like clerical staff engaged.
“I too work from home and there are many works like making seniority lists, sending mails etc which can be done from home by some non-teaching staffers,” he maintained.
On private institutions forcing non teaching staff to visit the institution he said that such things will be violation of disaster act for which district administration may take action.
Meanwhile, all educational institutes including schools, colleges and universities in Kashmir wore a deserted look on Wednesday as the teaching and non-teaching staff have been allowed to stay home in view of a surge in COVID-19 cases in Jammu and Kashmir.
Teachers, however, were conducting online classes from home in the valley though many students alleged that they were unable to attend these classes due to non-availability of smart phones.
The COVID-19 cases have risen unabated in Kashmir valley, particularly the summer capital, Srinagar, which has recorded the major chunk of positive cases during the last about a fortnight. Srinagar alone, out of 3164 new COVID-19 cases, reported 1144 cases on Tuesday.
The educational institutes were already closed in the Union Territory since early this month till May 15 though teaching and non-teaching staff was asked to attend schools and colleges. The decision to allow teachers to taken online classes from their respective homes was taken after many teaching and non teaching staff members of Government schools tested positive for the virus in the Union Territory.
“In view of the prevailing COVID situation in J&K, all Schools, Colleges, Technical education and Skill development institutes shall not require in person attendance of any member of the staff. The teaching staff shall conduct online classes only from their homes,” an official said.
As many as 3,164 new positive cases of novel Corona virus, including 656 from Jammu division and 1457 from Kashmir division, were reported on Tuesday. Twenty five people, including 10 from Kashmir and 15 from Jammu, lost their lives to the virus on Tuesday.
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