Hyderabad: Government school teachers demand raise

Hyderabad: Over 4,000 teachers from government schools all over the state staged a protest at the Dharna Chowk near Indira Park demanding that their problems be redressed. They said that despite Chief Minister K. Chandrasekhar Rao assuring them directly that their issues would be resolv-ed, nothing changed even after a year.

Some of their demands include sanctioning promotions, increasing the retirement age to 61 and filling vacant teacher positions.

Teachers have been staging dharnas to press their charter of 29 demands, of which Mr Rao had assured would be fulfilled at a meeting held on May 16, 2018. None of them has been implemented, the teachers said.

Despite the rain, thousands of teachers were present at the protest. Mr Chava Ravi, a teacher, said, “There are no promotions since the last four years and as a result many teachers are losing out on their career growth. More importantly, positions which need responsible people are left vacant, which is a loss to the students.”

Mr Rao had promised during the recent election campaign that the retirement age of teachers would be increased to 61. There has been no word after Mr Rao won the election and formed government, said another teacher who was at the protest. The retirement age for teachers is 58 years.

Some of the other demands include implementation of service rules in model schools, equal work and equal pay for contract teachers and abolition of contributory pension scheme (CPS) and bringing back the old pension scheme.