Known for its sluggishness and careless approach, the education department is again living up to its dubious reputation by lagging far behind in completing the process of categorisation of work places based on accessible and hard to access areas.
The State Government had given a deadline to all the departments to compulsorily complete the process of categorisation by April 15. The department failed to complete the process by this deadline. Taking exception to the laid back attitude of the department, the education minister Arvind Pandey has directed the officials to ensure that the process of categorization is finished by April 21. The categorisation of work places is important as the after it the process of transfers would start based on new Transfer Act. It is worth mentioning here that last year no transfers of teachers took place as the education department declared last academic year as zero session for transfers.
Though the department has completed the categorisation process of Garhwal division and uploaded it on its website, the process is still incomplete in Kumaon. The director education, R K Kunwar said that the department is working on the process and it would get completed soon.
Meanwhile uploading of the list of schools of Garhwal division on basis of accessible and hard to access areas has kicked up a storm. The teachers are livid on finding many schools in easy to access area which earlier were in hard to access areas. Further they are agitated at removal of Ati Durgam( Very hard to access) category.
The General Secretary of the Rajkeeya Shikshak Sangh (RSS) Sohan Singh Majila said that norms have been violated in the categorisation process. He said that the Transfer Act -2017 clearly mentions that the work places located at altitude of more than 7000 ft should be categorised into Durgam category but a look into the list of Garhwal shows that the norm was openly flayed.
He further added that large number of schools which earlier were in Hard to access category have been now placed in easy to access category. “ This has ensured that the services of teachers posted to many years in Durgam schools would get nullified and treated as Sugam postings.
Such teachers would now get transferred to Durgam schools. Further the category of Ati Durgam is abolished which is also not acceptable to us,’’ he said.
The stand taken by the teacher organisation has made it clear that the department would have to face protests on the categorisation.