Chandigarh, Aug 22 (PTI) Congress leader Deepender Singh Hooda Monday alleged the Haryana government is closing schools and abolishing thousands of posts of teachers to handover education to private hands, charges denied by Education Minister Kanwar Pal.
Hooda said the state government told the assembly session earlier this year that 38,476 posts of teachers are vacant in the schools.
The government made no recruitment since then, but “reduced the number of vacancies to 35,980” now, he claimed.
“Similarly, the government is going to eliminate the posts of about 20,000 teachers in coming days by implementing Chirag Yojana and rationalisation,” he claimed, addressing the media after Banarsi Das Valmiki, former MLA from Kalayat, joined the Congress party here.
Hooda claimed the government closed 196 schools earlier. “And by closing 105 schools now, the government has clearly showed its true intentions.” “There are names of 1,057 more schools in this list which can be closed soon. This government has closed the science stream in 450 schools. In the current school session, total enrolments have decreased by one lakh compared to the previous session,” he told reporters here.
The Rajya Sabha MP hit out at the alleged anti-people policies of the BJP-led government at the Centre also.
“First, this government decided to handover agriculture to private hands, then started the contract system in the country’s armed forces (referring to the Agnipath scheme) and now the government is on a mission to handing over the education system to private hands,” he alleged reporters here Monday evening.
“This is the reason why the government has implemented a rationalisation policy…This system is so dangerous for schools that many teachers, parents and students have to take to the streets to protest against it.
“The Congress will also oppose this policy from every platform and every front, because it is a decision to deprive the children of Dalit, backward, rural, poor and working class of education,” he said.
Education Minister Kanwar Pal said the rationalisation of teachers is being done to address the skewed teacher-student ratio.
In some schools, the strength of teachers is not proportionate to that of students, he said.
The department is trying to ensure the prescribed student-teacher ratio is maintained in every school across the state, he said.
Detailing the rationalisation process, he said many schools have just a few students and that is why teachers are taking only two periods a day.
Terming the reports of closure of schools and abolishing posts “baseless”, Kanwar Pal said some schools with low student strength have been merged with schools within three-km radius. The department will neither close any school nor abolish the posts of teachers, he said. In fact, vacancies after transfers will be filled through Kaushal Rozgar Nigam and through direct recruitment, he said.
Meanwhile, Hooda also said during the Congress tenure about 19.50 lakh children from the poor, downtrodden and backward classes were given scholarships, but the present dispensation has almost closed the scheme.
“The government renamed the old schools as Model Sanskriti School, but no additional infrastructure has been created. The government has increased fees of the schools only by changing the name,” he said. PTI SUN TIR TIR
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Source: The Print
