HSC exams from Feb 21: 75,000 teachers threatentoskipduties

Teachers’ body says state failed to regularise teaching posts, give timely increments

MUMBAI: With Higher Secondary Certificate (HSC) exams scheduled to commence from Thursday, the state will be feeling the anxiety.

Reason? On Monday, the Maharashtra State Federation of Junior College Teachers’ Organisation (MSFJCTO), which claims to represent over 75,000 junior college teachers in the state, threatened to boycott the exam duties, including exam supervision and evaluation of papers.

The association said teachers would be compelled to take the step, as the government has failed to address their longpending demands.

Some of their demands include regularisation of teaching posts in colleges, timely increments to teachers who have completed 25 years of service, fixing the errors in the calculations made under Seventh Pay Commission, among others.

Despite repeated attempts by HT, representatives from state education department refused to comment on the issue.

“At a meeting held on January 31, the state education minister (Vinod Tawde) assured us of action and promised to take up our issues with the finance ministry. However, nothing has

happened ever since,” said Anil Deshmukh, president, MSFJCTO.

Deshmukh said that teachers continued to conduct oral exams and practicals, hoping that the state would look into their demands.

However, as it failed to do so, teachers will now be forced to boycott exam duties. In March 2018, the union had boycotted paper evaluation duties of Class 12 board exams, asking the education department to address their demands with immediate effect.

The strike was later withdrawn after the state promised the teachers to look into the

issues, Deshmukh said that the government has failed to bring their promises into action, as a result of which teachers have now decided to go on a strike again.

“We do not want students to suffer, but the government needs to act and address our issues,” Deshmukh added.

The teachers had called for boycott in 2017 and 2018 too. However, they completed their evaluations in time after the strike was called off at the last minute.

The results of Class 12 exams were also announced in time, despite the protests during the board exams.