Schoolteachers skip work for 'politics', inquiry marked

SHIMLA: Employees of the Himachal Pradesh directorate of education have claimed in a complaint to the state's education director on Tuesday that schoolteachers were barging into their office here almost every day, threatening them, and spoiling the "work atmosphere" in the process. The staff have demanded in the the complaint that a constant vigil should be kept on the teachers, as they had been skipping work regularly to come to their office for "political reasons". The superintendent of education department's higher education transfer cell, Kamla Thakur, said her colleagues and she remain occupied the whole day in work related to the transfer orders of teachers, but they were regularly been interrupted by some teachers. "One such example is a teachers' union president from a government school in who takes along a bunch of people and spends nearly 5 days of a week at the directorate office without any genuine work. I wonder when does he teach his students. When we employees ask him politely to come to directorate only if he genuinely has work, he starts threatening us that he has strong political backing and will raise protest demonstrations if intervened," she alleged.An employee, requesting anonymity, said a teachers' union president in the directorate threatened him that he would beat him up in front of other employees if he tries to stop him from coming to the directorate. "We cannot bear the humiliation just because that person is chosen some teachers president," he added.HP Non-teaching Employees' Association president Trilok Thakur said with approval of employees, he wrote an application to the director demanding immediate action. He said some teachers came to the directorate for genuine reasons, but some come simply for politics. "We appeal to the director to take immediate action against these employees. Otherwise, we would lodge a police complaint against such people," he added.HP higher education director Dinkar Burathoki said these kind of incidences affected the work atmosphere. "Teachers should be in schools, but they are gheraoeing the directorate for transfers and politics. After receiving a complaint, I have given charge of inquiry to additional director (administrative) Lakshmi Kant Sharma," he added.