Unemployed teachers climb water tank in protest in Amritsar

Members of the Unemployed Physical Education Teachers’ Union held a demonstration against the Punjab Government by climbing a water tank located in Friends Colony on the Majitha road here on Wednesday.

They were protesting against the exclusion of the physical education teachers from the latest gazette notification issued by the Punjab School Education Board regarding the recruitment of 2,000 PTI teachers.

As information regarding the climbing of a water tank by unemployed teachers spread, police teams rushed to the spot and persuade them to come down.

Mandeep Singh, joint secretary of the association, said in the recent notification issued by the Education Department, BPEd teachers should also be made eligible for giving examination. He said unemployed teachers had been preparing for the examination for the past two years. Now, the government has issued notification, in which only CPED and DPED teachers were included while the remaining teaching courses, including BPED, were excluded from giving the exam.

The union urged the Punjab Government to amend the notification and include all PTI teaching courses in it.

Later, following the intervention of the district administration, which arranged a meeting of the union members with the Punjab Education Minister Harjot Bains, the agitating unemployed teachers climbed down. The meeting of the union and the minister is fixed for April 4.