| Online class work suffers in higher secondary schools, 3000 lecturer posts vacant | | Masters demand promotions, over-aged contractual seek absorption, unemployed youth demand direct recruitments | | Early Times Report
Jammu, May 22: Scarcity of staff, especially the lecturers, is causing great obstructions in smooth imparting of online education to students in Government Higher Secondary schools. There are over 3000 posts of teachers vacant in the School Education Department.
However, the government is also in dilemma to draw a balance between the demands of various sections to fill the posts as masters in the department have been demanding 100 percent promotion, while contractual lecturers, most of whom are over aged, are demanding absorption and the unemployed youth have been demanding direct recruitment through Public Service Commission to fill these posts. But government to fill the posts has been affecting the education of students of government higher secondary schools.
According to details available with Early Times, the School Education department had a total of 3013 vacancies of lecturers in various Higher Secondary Schools till February 1, 2021. These posts include 321 posts of Education, 268 of Maths, 243 English, 239 Urdu, 191 Physics, 188 Political Science, 166 of Economics, 162 of Botany, 162 of EVS, 140 of History, 136 of Chemistry, 95 of Hindi, 87 of Sociology, 56 of Geography, 51 of Commerce, 44 of Persian, 31 of IP/IT, 23 of Computer Sciences, 22 of Philosophy, 22 of Functional English, 19 of Arabic, 17 of Statistics, 17 of Punjabi, 16 of Sanskrit, 14 of Kashmiri, 12 of Geology, 9 of Psychology, 8 of Islamic Studies, 7 of Home Sciences, 157 of Zoology beside others. Since last three months more posts would have fallen vacant and the vacancies would be higher.
Earlier against the vacant posts, the School Education Department had been engaging contractual faculty on academic arrangement basis to overcome the shortfall but since last two years, almost all the contractual faculty members have been disengaged, while students were left to fend for themselves.
Masters working in schools have been demanding mass promotions as according to them the department has not conducted a Departmental Promotion Committee (DPC) since 2019 despite an order issued during the reign of former Governor SP Malik. They alleged that the Human Resource Section (HRM) of the department was deliberately delaying the process due to some unknown reasons.
However, President of All J&K Plus-2 Contractual Forum, Pankaj said that the process of DPC should be stopped permanently. “Earlier also the department had effected 100 percent promotions of Masters against the quota of 50 percent to fill posts through departmental promotions”, President said, adding that over 1600 contractual faculty members had given their golden years to the department but had not been regularized despite a number of SROs as well as rules framed for absorption of contractual employees.
He further said that most of contractual lecturers (now disengaged) were over age and have no avenues of employment but despite requests to successive dispensations their pleas were not accepted. “Most of departmental Masters, who have been demanding mass promotions have either purchased their degrees from bogus universities or have managed the degrees through illegal means. By promoting all such masters to the posts of lecturers, the government is doing great disservice to the future of Jammu and Kashmir as well as to the Union Territory”, Pankaj said and appealed to the UT administration to stop the process without any delay.
Apart from these two sections, the highly qualified unemployed youth of UT have been demanding direct recruitment to fill these posts. “Since the conversion of State into UT, no post of Plus-2 lecturer has been advertised by PSC and if over 2000 posts would be advertised and direct recruitments would be made, it would be great relief to them as due to Covid-19 lockdown, they have been running from pillar to post for jobs”, an unemployed youth said, adding that there should be no mass promotions as the department needs young blood to infuse new life to the department and not the old horses, who were only concerned about monetary benefits.
Amid all these demands of various sections, the School Education department has claimed to make some internal arrangements to impart online education but according to teachers/masters, it was only for namesake but students have been suffering due to paucity of lecturers. |
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