A slew of elections in the State, starting with the Telangana Assembly polls last December, seems to have taken a toll on government school teachers, who term the mandatory duty as stressful.
With the Lok Sabha polls concluding in the State on April 11, teachers find themselves readying for duty again for the forthcoming Zilla and Mandal Parishad elections, slated to be held from April 22 to May 14.
Since last December, they have been away from regular school activities and classroom duty as they were drafted for training ahead of Assembly elections. Next came gram panchayat elections in three phases, followed by MLC elections for the Karimnagar graduate and teachers constituency and the more recent Lok Sabha polls. Now, being asked to attend training for elections to general bodies of Zilla and Mandal Parishads has them out of breath.
Busier than ever
What’s worse, they were assigned SSC exam spot valuation from Monday.
“For name sake, we get summer vacation. For the past few months, we have not had time to breathe, forget spending time with family,” rued the headmaster of a government high schoolhere, seeking anonymity.
Criticising assignment of election duty to women teachers in far flung villages without basic amenities such as washrooms, a teacher said, “Authorities even fail to provide proper food during our stay at the polling stations. During the recent Lok Sabha election duty, we were served stale and rotten food.”
Another teacher lamented the lack of breathing space between elections and said the spot valuation duty for SSC answer scripts has added insult to injury.
A union leader alleged that the Education department authorities were forced to deploy even lactating mothers, the injured, physically challenged and teachers due for retirement in six months for election duty. Many of them had to run from pillar to post for cancellation of their assigned duty, he added.
“Using the services of teachers for non-teaching work is a perennial problem”, said Telangana Rashtra Teachers Federation district president M. Prathap Reddy.
He said that the continuous election duties had overburdened teachers by wearing them out and eating up their personal time too.