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DINDIGUL: Even as the Department of School Education has been conducting counselling sessions for teachers seeking transfers throughout the State, 3,000-odd Block Resource Teacher Educators, working under Sarva Shiksha Abhiyan (SSA), have been struggling to get transfers for the past four years. Mostly women, they are either graduates or postgraduates or M. Phil degree holders, along with a B.Ed degree.

About 110 teachers in the district, who came to a counselling centre in Dindigul on Saturday, were asked to leave. "No transfer" was the curt reply of officials. Many intolerably upset women started crying.

"There is no one to listen to our grievances. Many like us throughout the State undergo a similar trauma. At the time of appointment, we were told that Educator posts and regular School Assistant posts were inter-changeable. Then why are we denied transfers," they question.

Ninety per cent of teacher educators working in Dindigul district belong to Tiruvallur, Tirunelveli, Kanyakumari, Virudhunagar, Theni and Ramanathapuram districts.

These women have been struggling alone, leaving their husbands and children in their far away native places. Their agony does not stop there. The work allotted to them is neither relevant to their qualification nor related to the work prescribed by the Government, they allege. "Though our prime duty is to train teachers up to secondary level, we are deputed to collect various data. With no transport facility, we have to walk long distances to remote villages and collect data." "When the Government permitted SSA officials in supervisory positions to join as headmasters in schools and vice versa, why does it not respond to our pleas, they ask.

Such dejection and desperation would ultimately affect implementation of SSA schemes, a senior official in the School Education Department said.

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