Over 72,000 para-teachers of the State witnessed their say heard in the Parliament on Monday, when Chatra MP Sunil Kumar Singh requested Human Resource Development Ministry to ensure dignified and timely salary to all Para, teachers, BRPs and CRPs. Singh also requested the Ministry to accommodate all eligible Para teachers in more than 90,000 vacancies of the teachers in State, that also without any precondition. However, he didn’t define ‘eligibility’ of Para teachers for getting enrolled as full time teachers.
Singh said in the lok Sabha that the Para teachers had been working since last one and half decade, underpaid. This resulted in agitations and strike, many a times extending to hunger strikes against demands of pay-hike, timely payment, induction of Para teachers as permanent if and when there appeared vacancies, Singh added. He requested the Ministry to come into the picture and do something for the betterment of those Para teachers who were working on less than Rs. 10,000 a month, as the plan in which those teachers were recruited in was of the Union government and not of the State government.
Presenting data related to Para teachers in State, he added that Jharkhand was a home of just 48,528 government run schools in which 73,793 seats out of granted 1,92,200 seats remained vacant. He informed the Parliament that Jharkhand was among a few states where 7,391 remained single teacher-each run schools. “Bigger issue is that in our system, a teacher needs to furnish every other thing except teaching. Census, election duty, different kinds of survey and what not, all these are the jobs that government teachers are destined to do away with,” said Singh.