DEMANDING JUSTICE: Members of the Pre-Primary Unemployed Teachers Association staging a `rasta roko' in front of the Deputy Commissioner's office in Gulbarga on Sunday.

GULBARGA: Police arrested more than 100 women who were staging a "rasta roko" in front of the Deputy Commissioner's office here on Sunday in protest against the "indifferent" attitude of the State Government to the problems of unemployed pre-primary trained teacher candidates, after they refused to call off their agitation.

The agitation was organised by the All India Youth Federation and the Pre-Primary Unemployed Teachers Association, and sought to attract the attention of Chief Minister H.D. Kumaraswamy, who was visiting the city, to the issue. They organised the agitation on the road on which the Chief Minister's motorcade was to pass.

Meeting cancelled

However, the Chief Minister cancelled his scheduled review meeting and went straight to Veerashaiva Kalyana Mantap, where the wedding ceremony of the daughter of Janata Dal (Secular) MLA from Afsalpur, M.Y. Patil, was being held.

He then left for Bidar in a helicopter. When the police officials tried to persuade the demonstrators to call off their agitation as the Chief Minister had already left the city, they refused to budge. They were arrested, but released later. In a memorandum addressed to the Chief Minister, the unemployed teacher candidates pointed out that in the early 1970s, the Government had established the pre-primary schools and simultaneously started teachers' training courses so that trained candidates could be posted at these schools. However, in the 1990s, a large number of private pre-primary schools were started, prompting the Government to discontinue the pre-primary schools in 1998, they said.

The memorandum said the training programme had been continuing till today and every year, nearly 600 teacher candidates, all of them women, were graduating from such institutions. But since 1998, not one of them had been recruited.

It demanded that the Government immediately implement the recommendations of the Baragur Ramachandrappa Committee that Kannada-medium pre-primary schools be started, to improve the quality of education in Kannada.

It also said that the Government should give preference to schools covered under the Sarva Shikshana Abhiyan scheme while implementing the recommendations and ensure that all the unemployed trained teacher candidates were given postings.

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