Won’t budge till Tamil Nadu government holds talks: JACTTO-GEO

CHENNAI: With no thawing of ice in sight in the past week, members of Joint Action Council of Tamil Nadu Teachers’ Organisations and Government Employees’ Organisations (Jactto-Geo) said that despite arrests and suspensions, they will continue the strike.

A high-level committee of the organisations’ leaders will meet in Madurai on Monday to decide further course of action, said Meenakshi Sundaram, one of the State coordinators of Jactto-Geo.

“Even though the government has arrested and suspended many of our senior members, we have formed a shadow high-level committee to replace them and coordinate the strike,” he said. The decision to continue the strike was taken even as the School Education department on Sunday issued a circular offering teachers a way to escape disciplinary action.

If teachers turn up for work on Monday and sign an undertaking not to participate in the strike again, the department has said that no action will be taken against them. 

While Thiruvalar Selvi, Chief Education Officer of Chennai, announced this get-away on Friday, the department has decided to use the same strategy to prevent teachers from striking.

Members of Jactto-Geo were irked as the government has asked them to call off the strike citing upcoming public exams. “We planned to launch strike in December, but we were asked to postpone it as the State was recovering from cyclone Gaja. Now they are bringing up another reason,” said Sundaram, adding that the strike would continue until the government held peace talks with the association.

‘Take steps to end strike’

The government should take steps to end the six-day-old JACTTO-GEO strike, PMK founder S Ramadoss said on Sunday.

In a statement, he said the public and poor students had been affected due to the strike. Hence, it is the duty of the government to put an end to the protest. The government should withdraw the cases registered against the protestors and the 17-b charge memo. It should hold talks with the strikers, he said.