Teachers Day function marred by police lathicharge

Kapurthala, Sept 5 (UNI) A state-level function on Teachers' Day was marred with police resorting to lathicharge to prevent agitating Education Volunteers, demanding regularisation, from proceeding towards the venue of the main function here.

More than a dozen agitating volunteers received minor injuries in a lathicharge by the police at Court Chowk when they were trying to proceed towards the venue of function to be addressed by the Punjab Education Minister Dr Upinderjit Kaur.

The police rounded up more than a hundred agitating volunteers from different locations in the town and took them to police stations at Subhanpur and Dhilwan.

Agitating volunteer Vijay Kumar of Batala, who managed to enter the venue of function at Sainik School, raised slogans against the government for not fulfilling the promise to regularise their services as soon as the Education Minister started her speech.

He was immediately overpoered by SAD workers and police arrested him.

Later, Dr Kaur appealed to the agitators to shun the path of confrontation and sought to assure them that the government was ready for talks to solve their problems.

The state government had advertised 14,000 posts to fill the vacant posts of teachers as more than fifty percent posts in the primary schools and colleges had been lying vacant for the past so many years, she said.

Dr Kaur claimed that education and health were the top priority of the SAD-BJP government and government would try to impart quality education to the students. About 350 schools in the state would be upgraded to meet this goal, she said.

She announced that government had decided not to give non-teaching work to the teachers as it had adverse impact on the education of the students. The government had decided to give employment to the wards of the teachers on the compassionate ground in case of death of the teacher, she added.

On the occasion, SAD Acting President Sukhbir Singh Badal gave away appointment letters to 31 teachers on the compassionate ground.

Addressing the function, Sukhbir Singh Badal said the education is the top priority of the government and one hundred Adarsh schools were being opened in Punjab by the Industrialists to impart quality education to the poor students. He stressed the need to improve the education system by providing technical education to the students to enable them to earn their livlihood.

Surinder Kaur Badal wife of Chief Minister Parkash Singh Badal honoured 15 teachers with State awards on this occasion. The State awardees are Gurmit Singh, Gurmail Singh, Hardev Singh, Gulab Singh, Malkiat Kaur, Lakhpat Rai, Rajan Sharma, Sarabjit Singh, Surjit Singh, Kulwant Bajwa, Sudarshan Kumar, Sukhdev Singh, Harbans Singh Sidhu, Tilak Raj and Gurpreet Singh. The awardees were given a cash award of Rs 10,000, a citation and medal.

UNI