Pune: Teachers want insurance for deceased colleagues

PUNE: The Maharashtra State Primary Teachers Association has written to the education officers and chief executive officers of all zilla parishads demanding that the teachers who died due to Covid-19 while on Covid duty be identified and insurance money promised by the state be given to their dependents.
The association said no data is available about the number of such deaths.
Teachers have been appointed for various Covid-19 related duties such as manning the check posts, Covid-19 quarantine centres, ration shops, home-to-home surveys among others. The association claims that many have contracted the virus while on duty and succumbed.
Vijay Kombe, general secretary of the association, said, “There is hardly any data on the number of teachers who have died till now and the number of teachers who have received the insurance. When proposals are sent, they are returned with queries. All this needs to be taken care of and the money should be transferred to the dependents as soon as possible.”
Son of a headmaster of a Zilla Parishad school from Nagpur who died due to Covid-19 said, “My father would have turned 56 this June. He was on Covid duty since the pandemic began. He contracted the virus while doing his duty, and succumbed to it later in the hospital. We have yet to receive any money,” the son who is in college said.
Pune Zilla Parishad’s chief executive officer Ayush Prasad said he had received seven proposals from the families of teachers who succumbed to the illness in his jurisdiction which he had sent to the government.
“However, it had to be routed through the education commissioner and hence we again sent it to the education commissioner who must have forwarded it to the government. Till now, we have got an insurance amount of up to Rs 5.5 crore for 11 people which includes gram sevaks, peons among others but none of the teachers has got it,” Prasad said.
Education commissioner Vishal Solanki said, “We have sent their demands to the government for consideration. It is under process at Mantralaya.” He did not comment on how many proposals have been sent till now and how many of them have received the money.