Transfers gone awry

Naina Mishra

Tribune News Service

Ludhiana, August 21

The District Institute for Education and Teaching (DIET) centre, Ludhiana, with an enrollment of over 200 students has been left with merely four teachers after lecturers were transferred to the government schools.

The Education Department on Monday issued transfer orders of 60 lecturers from the DIET centres. Earlier, the department identified 70 teachers working at 16 centres across the state to fill vacancy of science teachers at the government schools.

In Ludhiana, only four teachers are running four sections consisting of 50 students each. There is no post left for subjects, including Punjabi, Hindi, science, art and craft and physical education.

The centre also has five departments meant for providing pre-service training to teachers and research work.

The department meant for research purpose – curriculum material development and evaluation (CMDE), work experience (WE), educational technology (TE), In-service programmes field interaction, innovation and co-ordination(IFIC) and planning and management (P&M) has been left sans teachers after transfer orders. Pre-service teacher education (PSTE) department has just one teacher left now.

As per the official data, as many as 104 posts at the DIET centres were identified as surplus. Of these, 60 science and mathematics lecturers have already been transferred.

As many as seven posts were termed surplus in Ludhiana centre. However, teachers say that the centre was already reeling under shortage of staff. “The centre earlier had 10 teachers against 14 sanctioned posts. Now, there are only four teachers left at the centre,” said a teacher on condition of anonymity.

The surplus posts of other subjects include English (27), Punjabi (2), social studies (1), commerce (2) and senior lecturers (2). Sources said the department is disbanding the DIET centres by shifting teachers to government schools.

Meanwhile, Inderjit Singh, Director, State Council Education Research and Training (SCERT) said, “The vacancies will be filled at the DIET centres where there is a shortage. The centres will have 14 teachers. It can never happen that the DIET centres are left without teachers and students are made to suffer.”

He said, “According to new MHRD ruling, we will provide required subject teachers. The filed has already been moved to the Education Secretary. There are 2-3 lectures of one subject at these centres and we want to rationalise the posts. These teachers are used to comfort and are now facing a problem when asked to relocate.”