Punjab Chief Minister Bhagwant Mann Friday said a notification for regularisation of the services of 8,736 contractual teachers has been issued. The announcement came after a five-member delegation of teachers met Mann.
The delegation thanked Mann for accepting their long-pending demand. Mann handed over the notification of regularising the services to the delegation and said these teachers have been working for long on contractual posts only, adding that some of them have been discharging their duties for the last 14 years.
Mann said for a bright future of students, the livelihood of teachers must be secured. Keeping in view this fact only, his government decided to regularise services of these teachers, said Mann.
The Punjab Cabinet had last month given a nod to a policy framed for regularising the services of contractual, ad hoc, daily wage and temporary teachers who have completed 10 years of service.
It decided to regularise the services of around 9,000 teachers by placing them in a special cadre. According to the policy, the beneficiary employees will continue in service till 58 years of age.
Meanwhile, addressing a press conference at Chandigarh, state School Education Minister Harjot Singh Bains said that the AAP had promised to regularise the jobs of contractual employees within six months of formation of the government, but the Mann government fulfilled its promise in five-and-a-half months.
He said a ‘policy for welfare of ad hoc, contractual, temporary teachers (nation builder) and other employees in the school education department’ has been notified in record time.’
“This step is evidence of the dedication of the AAP government towards uplifting Punjab,” he added.
Attacking the previous governments, Bains said that they recruited the teachers on contracts and exploited them for a long by doling out peanuts in the name of wages.
“Our party leaders, including Bhagwant Singh Mann and national convener Arvind Kejriwal, had participated in several ‘dharnas’ to resolve demands of these temporary teachers before the Punjab Assembly elections. We had given them a guarantee that these teachers would be regularised on priority basis and I am elated to announce that today, we have fulfilled our another guarantee,” Bains said.
He said that the previous governments had also announced to regularise these teachers twice, but nothing happened on the ground. “They have been fooling people only for the sake of voters,” said Bains.
