KOCHI: The suspicion that only the powerful and the connected can survive in government departments is being proved true in the case of around 80% of the 2,000 higher secondary school teachers, who have been denied transfers to their home stations for the past two years. They had even filed a petition with the Kerala Administration Tribunal (KAT) last month seeking a solution to their plight.
“We didn’t receive any favourable response. All that KAT decided was to post the hearing to February 2022. The reason? The government needs more time to effect the general transfer in the Higher Secondary School Teacher (HSST) and HSST (junior) categories, and that it will consider the issue at the time of general transfer,” said an HSS teacher.
The issues related to the HSST section are many, he pointed out. “But no one is brave enough to come forward fearing repercussions,” said the teacher who himself did not want to be named. According to a lady teacher, usually, the transfers happen every year. “However, for the past two years and three months, there has been no movement, especially in the HSS section.
This has put many teachers in a tough spot,” the teacher said. She pointed out the case of a teacher who recently underwent heart surgery and is stationed 400km away from her home. “There is no one to take care of her. And it’s very difficult for her to travel 400km to her home station to visit her family.”
According to another teacher, some use their clout in the education department and the government to reap the benefits that outstation postings give in their service records while remaining close to their home stations. “How can that be justified?” asked the teacher.
“A person who works as an outstation teacher at a school just 25km away from the place marked as their home station gets the same weightage in their service records as that of a person working some 195km away from their home,” he said.
As the transfer process gets delayed, the weightage also increases proportionally, he pointed out.
“Since 2016, many people have used their clout to get postings in districts neighbouring their home stations,” he said. Pointing out another folly in the rules, the teacher said, “If a person works at a distance of at least 200km away from the home station, they get 1.25 years as the weightage in their service records. However, to get a weightage of three more months, they will have to work 400km away.”