Teachers’ front holds protest seeking fulfilment of long-pending demands

Jalandhar, June 30

The Democratic Teachers’ Front (DTF) protested against the state government for not heeding their long-pending demands. Under the leadership of DTF state president Vikram Dev Singh and general secretary Mukesh Kumar, hundreds of district and state leaders gathered in the city and expressed their anger against the government by staging a dharna.

The union had announced a protest march to the ruling party’s election office, but AAP’s byelection candidate Mahinder Bhagat assured the protesters that a meeting with Chief Minister Bhagwant Mann would be organised in in the next three to four days.

“Despite the assurances given by the Education Minister, no action had been taken against BPEO Jakhwali, who is surrounded by allegations of corruption,” said a protester, adding: “Apart from this, restoration of old pension, old pay scales and deductions — including ACP scheme, rural allowance and border area allowance, and DA of the pending instalments — and regularisation of all raw teachers in the Education Department in the true sense, shifting them to the Education Department by applying the sixth Punjab Pay Commission for computer teachers, withdrawal of grants sent to government schools during the session 2023-24 midway in order to get the principals and teachers out of economic crisis, reissuing grants, correcting the errors in the seniority lists, carrying out pending promotions of non-teaching cadres, putting a stop to the implementation of the syllabus changes made under the National Education Policy-2020 by the Punjab School Education Board and formulation of Punjab’s own education policy, are some of the demands that should be addressed at the earliest.”