Day after cane-charge, protesting IEVs lash out at police

Bathinda, June 12

A day after they were thrashed by the police, members of the Inclusive Education Volunteers Union, Punjab, again sat on a protest outside the District Administrative Complex and raised slogans against the state government. They condemned the police for cane-charging the peacefully protesting teachers

They lashed out at the police for registering false cases against the Inclusive Education Volunteers (IEV) and making sure that instead of taking care of their duties, they were left to make multiple rounds of courts and police stations.

Sharing details about the importance of the work being done by the IEVs under the Sarva Shiksha Abhiyaan, state president of the union Jaswant Singh Dhannu said as part of the Integrated Education for the Disabled (IED) under the Sarva Siksha Abhiyaan, assessment camps were held for differently-abled children who were found to be suffering from one or the other kind of physical or mental disability during a door-to-door survey conducted by the volunteers.

”The survey is done so as to get the details of the children with special needs. While many of them are in schools, several don’t go to school. As a part of the IED programme, medical aid and help is given to such children to make them capable of coming to schools and receive education,” said Dhannu.

The volunteers are also involved in home-based education which aims to cover the out-of-school children suffering from a severe form of disability. Special teachers or the Inclusive Education Volunteers in the district have been trained to educate the children on how to take care of themselves and explain their parents the nuances of special care these children may require. The IEVs spend three months on every child. —TNS