Teachers protest at MCD office over unmet demands
NEW DELHI: Echoing their pending demand for implementation of student-teacher ratio as per the Right to Education Act (RTE) 2009 among other major issues, scores of teachers of MCD-run schools held a ‘Satyagraha Protest’ in front of its headquarters at the Civic Centre on Monday.
The Leader of Opposition (LoP) in MCD House Raja Iqbal Singh, who also took part in the protest, said, “There has been a 40 per cent dip in the number of students in Nagar Nigam schools, and to conceal this, the AAP has declared 500 teachers as surplus and is transferring them here and there, causing teachers to protest.”
He said that the AAP-led MCD should work towards increasing the number of students in MCD schools and improving the quality of education. Talking to this newspaper, Kuldeep Singh Khatri, president of Shikshak Nyay Manch, who was leading the protest, alleged that there are only 19,000 teachers for 8,16,655 students and 8,000 more teachers are required to maintain the student-teacher ratio as per RTE 2009 Act. According to him, there has been no recruitment of teachers since 2019 and the surplus of 500 teachers declared by MCD is incorrect.
A protesting teacher from Karol Bagh Zone, who did not wish to be named, said, “As many principals have retired and Trained Graduate Teachers have been promoted, there is a shortfall of teachers, and the surplus of 500 teachers shown by MCD is incorrect.” She said that there is also a shortage of computer teachers for IT department, watchmen, cleaners, and others, and the teachers are made to do the work of these people, which in turn, hampers the quality of education imparted to students.