The Assam government announced on Tuesday that it will eliminate 8,000 vacant permanent school teacher positions because a larger number of contractual faculty members are already working through the Sarba Siksha Abhiyan (SSA).
Opposition parties and student organisations have slammed the government, claiming that the move is harmful to vernacular medium schools.
According to Education Minister Ranoj Pegu, the state government offered a regular pay scale and other benefits such as service tenure up to 60 years of age to 11,206 contractual teachers working under the SSA in Lower Primary and Upper Primary schools in 2020.
“In order to maintain rationality against this near-regularisation, the Govt. decided to keep 8000 sanctioned posts of regular teachers vacant to avoid duplicity and financial neutrality,” he said in a Facebook post.
The education minister stated that because these vacant positions have been frozen and will remain vacant for a long time until the contractual teachers retire, the government deemed it “prudent to abolish them for financial discipline.”
He did, however, state that the state government may create positions as needed in the future due to an increase in enrolment.
In response to the announcement, Assam Jatiya Parishad president Lurinjyoti Gogoi claimed that abolishing the posts is “short-sighted” and detrimental to the public education system.
“Such conspiracies of the government against vernacular medium schools are very old and the latest is the abolishing of thousands of teachers’ posts. Such a decision related to the education sector, which is a Constitutional subject, is not at all acceptable,” he said.
Aminul Islam, general secretary of the All India United Democratic Front (AIUDF), stated that instead of providing jobs to unemployed youths, the government has eliminated thousands of opportunities.
“This step is really unfortunate at a time when only one teacher is imparting education in 4,000 schools in the state. To maintain the teacher-student ratio as per the NEP, more hiring is required,” he added.
Sankarjyoti Baruah, general secretary of the All Assam Students’ Union (AASU), claimed that the BJP-led government in Assam intends to “complete” the state’s vernacular medium institutions.
“This will destroy all government schools in Assamese, Bodo and other local languages. There are around 500 Assamese medium schools where there is no teacher at all. We demand that the government withdraw the decision immediately,” Baruah added.
After hearing from the opposition, Pegu called an “urgent press conference” on the subject on Wednesday.
On Monday, School Education Secretary Bijoya Choudhury wrote to Assam’s Accountant General informing him of the decision to eliminate the vacant positions of regular teachers.
According to her letter, 4,285 of the total posts are in Lower Primary schools, with the remaining 3,715 in Upper Primary schools.