Andhra Pradesh - Anantapur   

Teachers play spoilsport

ANANTAPUR: The ‘Anantha Aanimuthyalu’ programme announced by Collector N. Sridhar in the first week of March to help meritorious students from poor families to pursue their education after SSC, appears to be running into rough weather with the teachers refusing to contribute their one-day salary to the fund on the grounds that they were against corporate education sector.

Different quarters have already contributed to the fund including officers, employees and elected representatives and the contributions have already swelled to about Rs. 25 lakhs so far.

The district administration has been inspiring all the government departments to contribute to the cause and accordingly received encouraging response with most of the departments contributing their one day salary to the fund.

However, the fund has not received contribution from the education department, which has the highest number of employees in the district.

The teachers’ associations refused to contribute questioning the rationale for their contribution. They were insisting upon meeting of teachers and government junior college lecturers with the Collector to put across their views.

“We have been fighting the corporate education and how can we contribute to a fund which ultimately sends students to that sector”, leaders of teachers’ associations were learnt to have questioned a district officer who has been entrusted the task of convincing the teachers to contribute to the fund.

There are about 13,000 teachers in the district and their contribution of one day salary to the fund could boost it by about Rs. 60 to 70 lakhs.

The teachers’ associations’ contention was that the corporate junior colleges were picking up highly meritorious students from government high schools for free education just for holding onto their reputation and a few NGOs like RDT were also selecting the next range of students from poor families for free education.

The ones left for government junior colleges were average students and below.

With the lack of infrastructure, paucity funds and facilities and the left over students, how can the government junior college perform on par with the corporate colleges, they were learnt to have questioned the district officer.

Any effort to drain the merit available for government junior colleges would jeopardise their very existence in the years to come, the teachers’ leaders were learnt to have said.

Groups like CEC and HEC were already being withdrawn on account of “poor performance”, they were learnt to have mentioned.

When questioned by the district officer why the teachers were admitting their children in corporate colleges the latter were said to have again blamed the government for lack of facilities in government junior colleges.

It is being planned to fund about 1,000 meritorious students from poor families to pursue Intermediate in corporate colleges in the coming academic year with the help of Anantha Aanimuthyalu with an assistance of Rs. 20,000 each.

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