A Singhu-like site outside residence of Pargat Singh in Jalandhar

Tribune News Service

Jalandhar, December 15

It is evening time and there is hectic activity outside the residence of Punjab Education Minister Pargat Singh. A tent stands erected by the ETT-TET Pass Teachers’ Union for the past nearly 10 days. Inside the tent, mattresses have been laid and some men and women unionists are seen taking rest while some of their counterparts are busy preparing dinner.

There are some women cooking lentils in a huge pot kept on fire. There are women chopping onions and garlic for the tadka and still others preparing dough out of the stock of wheat flour that they have collected from the people of surrounding villages. The teachers say that they will not go till the minister orders that their salaries, which have been reduced from Rs 44,000 to Rs 25,000 are restored.

Says Kamal Thakur, a unionist: “We are 180 teachers and we won’t go from here till our salary is restored. It has been reduced haphazardly without assigning any reason. We have met Education Minister Pargat Singh but nothing has happened. The minister himself has committed that it is a departmental error, but he has not given us a solution to our problem.” The teachers have been sitting like this for the past 10 days and have also brought in their kids, who sleep with them through the nights in the tents. There are about five-six kids of the age as low as one year who are accompanying their mothers. Gurvir, another unionist, said: “Since it gets foggy early morning, the tent start seeping due to mist and dew. We still do not have any tarpaulin sheets to cover our tents. The poor kids are bearing it all with us and learning lessons of life the hard way.”

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