CPM asks government to regularise PTA

Shimla, Apr 8 (UNI) The CPM today extended its support to the agitating teachers appointed by the Parent Teacher Association (PTA) and called upon the state government to accept their demands and regularise them.

''Their regularisation will not be a problem with thousands of vacancies in different schools of the state'', party's state secretary Rakesh Singha said in a release here.

He said the problem was due to the neo liberalisation policies being pusued by the previous government, which appointed people on contract instead of appointed them on a regular basis, thereby creating huge anomalies.

The PTA teachers should also be given an opportunity to appear whatever examination was necessary for their recruitment, Mr Singha added.

He said the government should only appoint permanent teachers in the schools of the state and the policy of contractual employment should be done away with completely.

Meanwhile, describing the demands of the teachers appointed by the PTA as fair, the Himachal Pradesh unit of the Democratic Youth Federation of India (DYFI) has also extended its support to the agitation of the teachers.

''While the state government was claiming to provide employment opportunities to the youth of the state, it was trying to find ways and means to fire 15,000 PTA teachers,'' DFYI's state secretary Kushal Bhardwaj said in a press release here.

He condemned the state government for not making any efforts to resolve the issue, and said that the review committee would not be of any help until the PTA issue was negotiated properly.

Unless the state government initiated steps to resolve the imbroglio, the DYFI would launch a state wide agitation in support of these teachers, Mr Bhardwaj added.

He said the unemployed were left to bear the brunt of successive government's myopic vision, as they were appointed as teachers in the schools with different names and their appointments cancelled after the new government came to power after winning the assembly elections in the name of rectifying the previous government's decisions.

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