Unending agitations in Education department

Our Education department has always been in the thick of controversy. More often than not, the teachers are for this reason or that on agitation mode — shouting slogans, staging dharnas, hurling angry words at the Education minister to vent their grievances. We can understand well that during the Congress regime, a good number of teachers received their appointments by greasing the palms of officers of the Education department, obviously some of them faced termination while some others could barely manage to survive. But even with the BJP holding reins, the State government is doing disservice to a section of TeT teachers. Another grievance of a section of TeT teachers is that when they have still not been employed, why is the State government holding new TeT examination to embarrass those who already passed TeT and are awaiting a post? As if all these controversies are not enough, now the mid-day-meal (MDM) cooks have launched an agitation, which is gaining momentum with each passing day. The agitation began in the wake of handing over the mid-day-meal scheme to NGOs to implement, which implies throwing out all those cooks from service. What is shocking is that NGOs are providing sub-standard meal to students. But the Education minister smells a rat in the exercise of sub-standard meal, terming it an ‘act of sabotage’ by a section of disgruntled cooks! People of Assam are fed up with these agitations, most of which they feel are created by the Education department itself.

Ashok Bordoloi,

Dibrugarh.