Balwant Garg

Tribune News Service

Faridkot, June 6

The mass transfer of about 20,000 government schoolteachers in the state in the past two months has left hundreds of teachers in difficult situation. They are burdened with the task of ‘scrutinising’ their relatives’ conflict of interests with government schools.

Conflict of interest

As per the new Teachers’ Transfer Policy, in case any relative of the government teacher, including his/her husband, wife, mother, father, brother, sister, mother-in-law, father-in-law, sister-in-law, brother-in-law, son or daughter are running any private school or any of them is a member of the management committee of such school, whether affiliated or not, within a radius of 15 km from government school of his/her posting, the teacher shall be transferred in a government school 15 km away from that private school.

If any teacher transferred in 2021, falls under this rule of the new rule, he/she is duty bound to report the district nodal officer of the department so that the teacher be transferred to a school beyond 15 km of radius of the private school, reads a letter of Director, School Education (senior secondary), to all district education officers in the state.

The School Education Department believes in most of such situations the business or any other interest of family members in a private school can create a conflict of interest with the government school. “There are high chances that a teacher in government school will ask his students to join private school in which his family has business or other interest,” said a senior functionary in the department.

To check this ‘migration’ of students from government schools to private schools, the new clause has been added in the transfer policy. So far teachers were unaware of the new rule, until the department issued a letter to the district-level authorities to ensure its compliance.

“If any teacher wilfully hides this fact, he will be punished for violating the service rules,” said the functionary.