Mir Arif
Baramulla, Dec 13 (KNB): The lackadaisical attitude of the Education Department can be gauged by the fact that the Education Volunteers (EV’s) appointed under the Sarva Shiksha Abhiyaan (SSA) Scheme in 2003-2004 are yet to be regularised and have appealed the School Education Minister Altaf Bukhari to come to their rescue.
As per details available with the Kashmir News Bureau the Education Volunteer scheme is part of the centrally sponsored SSA scheme and by virtue of this an Education Volunteer was supposed to hire a building for providing basic education to students from 1st primary to 5th standard. An Education Volunteer gets Rs 1000 as monthly honorarium for the job. Under the said scheme the volunteer was supposed to be regularized after a period of 2 years by the State Government, but a group of Education Volunteers told Kashmir News Bureau that they were appointed in 2004 vide Order No:Edu/SSA/SPD/30/556 Dated:19/04/2004 but instead of being regularized by the Government in 2005 they were converted as Rehbar e Taleem (ReT) teachers in 2008 and some were left for the reasons unknown and after this conversion some of these volunteer teachers were regularized as general line teachers. These volunteers are demanding that they have lost around 10 years due to Government apathy and now they should be regularised at an earliest and these years must be included in their service.
In the State of Jammu & Kashmir this scheme was implemented in 2002-03. The habitation as a unit of planning, the Govt. of J&K sanctioned the Education Gurantee Centres (EGS ) to the reserved habitations and appointed education volunteers (EVs) in these centers following the same norms as applied while appointing the Rehber-e-Taleem teachers.
According to the SSA norms after successful functioning for two years, the Education Guarantee Scheme (EGS) Centres were to be converted into the formal schools and therefore the Education Volunteers too were supposed to get converted into the formal teachers. Instead of this the Government converted only some of the the education volunteers as ReT’after a gap of many years.
It is pertinent to mention that some Education Volunteers were left to move from pillar to post and were not even converted into ReT’s.
“Government had made it clear few years back that Education Volunteers who had completed the 2+5 years pattern would be first converted into ReT’s and then they will be regularized but this did not happened “said an Education Volunteer of Baramulla.
“We hope that the School Education Minister will look into our genuine demands as our files have already been submitted to the office of Director School Education Kashmir but it is irony that the the files are pending with the School Education Department since last more than 5 years ” said another Education Volunteer Mohd Ramzan of Bijhama while talking to Kashmir News Bureau.
Despite repeated attempts Director School Education Kashmir GN Itoo was not available for comments as his mobile was switched off. (KNB)