Karnataka - Bangalore   

Teachers urge Centre to withdraw new pension scheme

— Photo: V. Sreenivasa Murthy

Speaking out: Participants at the State-level teachers’ convention in Bangalore on Sunday.

Bangalore: All India Democratic Teachers’ Organisation (AIDTO), on Sunday, demanded that the Centre should immediately withdraw its new pension scheme and that the State Government should withdraw the School Development Management Committees (SDMCs). Both schemes worked against the interest and welfare of the teaching community, it said.

Addressing the teachers’ convention, organised by the AIDTO, State Convenor K.Uma accused the Centre of using the funds collected from government employees, including primary and high school teachers, and investing it in profit-making businesses.

In a welfare society, she said that the government should give pension to a retired person and urged that the old system should continue. The SDMCs, she said, packed with the relatives and friends of politicians, had become centres of corruption and torture centres of teachers. The teachers in most unaided private primary and high schools were being paid salaries as low as Rs. 600 to Rs. 2,000. They should be given pay scales on a par with government schoolteachers, she said.

She added that the AIDTO was setting up two committees for taking up the demands of schoolteachers and college lecturers. It would also hold a workshop for discussing the problems faced by them. Teachers, she said, were given more non-teaching work and were asked to maintain several records, instead of being engaged solely in teaching activities.

While the cost of living was soaring along with high payments , it was not so with the teaching community, she said.

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