Orissa teachers to launch "jail bharo" agitation

Bhubaneswar, Aug 02 (UNI) Aggrieved over complete "apathy" of the Orissa government towards the education system, the All Orissa Teachers Federation(AITF) has decided to launch civil disobedience and "jail bharo" agitation across the state.

AITF general secretary Abani Baral told newspersons here today that during the first phase agitation, the teachers would organise mass meeting between August 1 and 16 at various places in the state and hold convention in all district headquarters on August 9.

On August 16, a rally would be organised here to be participated by over 25,000 teachers to chalk out the course of agitation like civil disobedience and "jail bharo" agitation till the government conceded the long standing demands.

Mr Baral alleged that the education system in the state had totally collapsed due to the apathetic attitude of the government.

The budgetary allocation on education had been reduced over the years, while no appointment had been made against the death or retire of the teachers since the last decade.

And all this had been done at the behest of the World Bank and the DFID, the AITF general secretary said and adding a deliberate attempt had been made to degrade the quality of education at the cost of privatisation of the education system.

Mr Baral said, " Nearly 25 lakh school children are deprived of reading in Upper Primary School as we have only 13,000 such schools as against 44,000 primary schools. " Similarly, there were only 7000 high schools in the state as against 13,000 Upper Primary Schools forcing yet another 50 per cent of students to leave the education.

He said the situation had come to such a state that while 50 lakh children had enrolled in the primary school, only three lakh of them appeared for High School examination.

Mr Baral alleged that since 1991 not a single teacher had been appointed against the vacancy when the state required about 88,000 teachers at the elementary education level and as many as 9000 vacancies were reported in the High School level.

UNI