Leaders of the Andhra Pradesh United Teachers’ Federation (UTF) have condemned the arrest of the teachers who took part in a demonstration at the District Education Officer’s office on Tuesday in support of their demand that they be exempted from the responsibility of uploading information on the several apps introduced by the school education authorities.
Federation’s State president N. Venkateswarlu and general secretary K. S. S. Prasad said that one teacher in primary schools and two more if the size of the school was big, was appointed for uploading information including the pictures of the bathrooms and teachers’ attendance on various apps that took the entire morning session (till 12.30 p.m.)
Headmasters of the schools that could not upload the information properly were issued memos, they said. They said that the children had been away from classroom teaching for 18 months on account of the lockdown imposed in the wake of COVID-19 pandemic. “Now, the schools are open and the teachers do not have sufficient time to discharge to the additional task of uploading information on the apps,” said Mr. Venkateswarlu.
‘No response from authorities’
Mr. Prasad said that the federation organised school-level and mandal-level demonstrations last month as the Education Minister and the department higher-ups did not respond to their representations. The federation leaders said if the government failed to address to their pleas, they would intensify protest and stage a demonstration at the office of the Department of School Education.
UTF’s honorary president P. Babureddy led the protest in Nellore, Mr. Venkateswarlu at Machilipatnam, K.S.Prasad in Chittoor, State co-president K. Suresh Kumar in Kurnool district, treasurer K. Srinivasa Rao in Ongole, secretaries B. Lakshmi Raja in Kadapa, G. Prabhakar Varma in Kakinada and Ch. Ravindra in Srikakulam.
Special Correspondent in Ongole adds: The members of the federation laid siege to the office of the District Education Officer.“The maintenance of records online is adding more burden to teachers, affecting the academic activity. We are ready to send all reports manually, which would save time,” said federation Prakasam district president S. Ravi.
