JAMMU: Castigating the State Government for paying no heed to the plight of school lecturers engaged on academic arrangements, scores of such lecturers assembled under the banner of ‘All J and K Contractual Lecturers (10+2) Forum’ at Exhibition Ground Jammu on Wednesday and took out a protest march. The police blocked them at Dogra Chowk and restrained them to go further. The angry teachers raised ant-government slogans and demanded immediate regularisation of their services.
Urging for the implementation of Apex Court’s decision of ‘equal pay for equal work’ in J and K, Abhimanyu Sharma a contractual lecturer regretted that the exploitation of the highly educated youth engaged as academic arrangement in schools on nominal wages was deplorable and inhumane.
He said that engagement of Ph.Ds, M.Phils and double post graduates as lecturers in the said institutions for negligible emoluments of Rs. 7,000 per month as against Rs. 45,000 for their counterparts in regular establishment, despite the same nature of work, was highly discriminatory and amounted to worst form of human rights violation.
He said that the lecturers who were made to work at lesser wage did not do so voluntarily but did so to provide food and shelter to their family at the cost of his self respect and dignity. He added that the contractual lecturers were rendering their services in the schools ranging from 5 to 15 years and several of them had been terminated by the government after exploiting them for more than a decade.
Seeking regularisation of the lecturers engaged on academic arrangements in the Education Department, Gurjeet Singh another contractual lecturer sought framing of a suitable regularisation policy and inclusion of such lecturers within the ambit of Special Regularisation Provisions Act of 2010.
He said that the use and throw policy adopted by the Govt. with regard to such highly educated youth was most contemptuous and shall not be tolerated any more.
He cautioned the Govt. not to play with the sentiments of such under employed youth otherwise they would take an agitational course on the streets and shall not relent unless they were assured justice with full dignity and honour. Sangeeta Sambyal, another contractual lecturer divulged that several lecturers engaged on academic arrangement in hilly and remote areas had shown reluctance to join services in view of negligible emoluments offered to them and as such the majority of schools had become defunct and staff deficient.
She asked the government to wake up from the deep slumber and take a serious cognisance of the brewing anger of the youth which could prove disastrous for the dispensation in the days to come. Prominent among those who spoke on the occasion included Vinod Kumar, Rajni Jamwal, Asha Pathania, Kanchan Bala, Shakeel, Randeep, Balwinder, Bablu Kumar, Seema Kumari, Vijay Sharma, Kiran Bala, Reva Rani besides others.