Municipal teachers oppose take over by School Education department

Protests staged across State demanding repeal of GO 84

Municipal school teachers across the State staged protests on Tuesday demanding repeal of GO 84 that envisages entrustment of supervision and administrative responsibilities of the municipal schools to the Education Department, on a par with the system being followed for government and Panchayat Raj schools.

Leaders of the Municipal Schools Parirakshana Samithi (Joint Action Committee) led the protests and criticised the government decision. In memorandums submitted to their local department officials, the teachers opposed common service rules for teachers of municipal and zilla parishad schools and demanded extension of DDO (drawing and disbursing officer) powers to the municipal headmasters, instead of Mandal Education Officers.

Their other demands included grant of GPF accounts to all municipal teachers, sanction of two municipal mahila junior colleges in every urban local body and extension of all facilities given to the government school teachers to their counterparts in municipal schools.

Amid protests by municipal teachers’ organisations, the government issued GO 84 on June 24, entrusting the supervision and administrative responsibilities of municipal schools to the Education Department.

According to the GO, the 123 Urban Local Bodies (ULBs) in the State have 2,114 municipal schools (325 high schools, 149 upper primary schools and 1,620 primary schools) and all of them exist in 59 ULBs. There are no municipal schools in the remaining ULBs and 13,948 teacher posts had been sanctioned in the municipal schools.

Since the amalgamation proposal of the Zilla Parishad/Mandal Praja Parishad teachers with the government teachers is under court litigation, the services of municipal school teachers would be considered as a special service and accordingly, the School Education Department will issue separate set of service rules for municipal teachers as was done in the case of ZP/MP teachers.

The School Education Department had been asked to make alternative arrangements for deploying the non-teaching staff in the municipal schools and till such time, the existing non-teaching staff of ULBs would continue. The contingent staff like sweepers in the municipal schools would be taken over by the School Education Department.

The GO makes it clear that the ownership of movable and immovable assets of municipal schools would continue to remain with the respective municipal councils/corporations.