Editor,
On behalf of the teaching community of Arunachal Pradesh, I would like to draw the attention of the state government towards the assigning of election duties to teachers.
In every election, be it parliamentary, assembly or panchayat election, teachers are given election duties in the highest numbers, whereas other government employees are also available. But teachers should not be engaged in election duties, because in other departments, official work can be kept pending for some time and it does not cause much harm to the people.
However, if we keep pending our syllabus due to a non-teaching job, it not only affects the students, but we also get scolding from parents, the public and the department head. If the syllabus is not completed on time, we get the tag of non-serious and bad teachers.
People may say that a few days of election duties will not hamper the syllabus. I would like to inform the people that schools do not remain open the whole year. There are Sundays, second Saturdays, and holidays. Apart from this, classes get disrupted due to drug awareness camps and health check-up camps. Programmes like Sarkar Aapke Dwar are conducted at schools. School buildings serve as centres for all kinds of activities.
The government, parents and the public always speak about giving special importance to education. If our government is really concerned about education, teachers must be exempted from election duties in the upcoming panchayat election which will be conducted in December.
Panton Lowan,
TGT,
H Sector, Itanagar