Chandigarh – The Aam Aadmi Party (AAP), Punjab, has slammed the Captain Amarinder Singh Government for its highhandedness and the oppression it let loose on the unemployed ETT, TET-qualified teachers in the state, who had been protesting against the government for jobs and has sought resignation of state education minister Vijay Inder Singla for his stubborn stance towards them.
In a statement issued from party headquarters on Monday, senior party leader and Leader of Opposition (LoP), Harpal Singh Cheema, state core committee chief and MLA principal Budh Ram, Deputy Leader of Opposition, Bibi Sarabjit Kaur Manuke, legislators Prof Baljinder Kaur and Rupinder Kaur Ruby said the government in the saddle, like its predecessors – Badal government, had failed to live up to the promise of providing ‘ghar-ghar naukri’, thus betraying the youth in the state.
Harpal Singh Cheema accused the Captain Amarinder Singh Government of being insensitive to the cause of the people of Punjab which, he added, reflected the anti-public face of the Captain who been running the state in a typical ‘royal’ tradition where the mighty ‘mafia’, which flourished during 10-year stint of the Badals, was calling the shot under the protective patronage of the political godfathers. Cheema said it was ironic that, on the one hand an acute staff crunch dogged various government schools and colleges in the state, while on the other, qualified teachers were facing the wrath for jobs as were being ‘lathi-charged’ for protesting against the government for the right reasons.
The LoP alleged that, instead of splurging the peoples’ money on the unprecedented publicity campaign over the government-sponsored ‘placement cells’ organized by private colleges/ universities under the garb of providing ‘ghar-ghar-naukri’, the Captain government should have organized ‘job melas’ for the qualified teachers who were left with no choice but to take the road route to press the government for the acceptance of their genuine demands.
Principal Budh Ram said on the occasion said that EET and TET qualified male and female teachers, some of them physically challenged, were forced to mount the dilapidated overhead water reservoir at Sangrur for the past over 20 days, saying neither the state education minister Vijay Inder Singh nor any other government emissary had visited them and, at least, and listened to their grievances. He lamented that, instead of standing by their side in this hour and hearing them out, the government had adopted oppressive measures and rained ‘lathis’ on them which, he said, the height of highhandedness on the part of the government.
Party leaders Prof Baljinder Kaur and Rupinder Kaur Ruby demanded that the Captain Amarinder Singh government should immediately come to the rescue of the striking teachers by filling all the posts that had been lying vacant in various schools and colleges in the state. They also demanded that the minimum age limit for all kinds of jobs be extended to 42 years.
The young leaders said that, given the opportunity by the people of the state in the 2022 elections, the AAP would leave no stone unturned to replicate the Arvind Kejriwal-led government model of education in Punjab thus giving a new meaning to the education system which, they said, had suffered abysmally due to the wrong policies of the successive governments lording over the state.
