Police foil teachers’ protest

Sukhmeet Bhasin

Tribune News Service

Bathinda, December 29

The police today foiled the protest bid of the ETT TET action committee by locking their committee activists inside the Teachers Home moments before they were to take out protest march in the city.

Irked over the move, the protesters started shouting slogans against the state government. While addressing the protesters, state union leader Jagpreet Singh exposed the anti-employment policies of the state government. He said, “On one side state government is showing dreams to the unemployed by announcing lakhs of new jobs and on another side it has gathered crores by conducting the TET exam from last five years.”

He said the state education department in 2011 had issued an advertisement of 7,041 posts, but due to the TET exam and Punjab and Jammu ETT 70:30 ratio, the recruitment was cancelled. During the ETT TET pass unemployed protest in February 2014, department issued advertisement of 4,901 posts, but that also was cancelled by the state government after taking hefty fees from the applicants.

He claimed that since 2011 the state government has not carried out any recruitment, but has been conducting TET exams from last five years.

He said recently the government had issued advertisement for 3,522 posts. Later, government stopped the recruitment process till 2015. Even government had announced the counselling schedule from December 17-24, which was also been put on hold.

He said numbers of the candidates which have passed the TET exam has crossed over 10,000 but government has announced only 3,522 posts. Bathinda district’s union president Ram Bhajan Singh said government should cancel this 3,522-post advertisement and instead issue new advertisement of 8,500 posts and general category age limit should be kept at 37 to 42 years, so that all the TET pass employed candidates should be given employment. They also threatened that if soon chief minister Parkash Singh Badal did not hold panel meeting with them, then they would intensify their protest in coming days.

Ravinder Kamboj, Jaspreet Singh, Gagandeep, Jagdev Singh, Tarsem Singh and Ritu addressed the protesters.