Letter campaign to PM

By Our Reporter

SHILLONG, JAN 29: Elementary school teachers in the state on Sunday announced a six-day letter campaign to Prime Minister Narendra Modi seeking his intervention into NIOS’ refusal to rectify the “faulty” D.EL.ED results. Sponsored under the banner of the Meghalaya SSA Schools Association (MSSASA), the letter will be send to the prime minister’s personal Whatsapp application from January 30 to February 4.

The decision was taken after the National Institute of Open Schooling (NIOS) failed to rectify the anomalies in the results of Diploma in Elementary Education (D.EL.ED) affecting over 4000 teacher trainees.

This will be the second phase of agitation after the school teachers staged a two-day sit-in-demonstration in front of the NIOS Shillong office as a mark of protest against the failure, last week.

In a statement i, MSSASA president Aristotle C Rymbai said, “We will launch a letter campaign requesting the prime minister’s intervention by directing the Union HRD Minister Prakash Javadekar, who is also the president of NIOS to take up the matter seriously and rectify the anomalies created by the institute on the D.EL.ED November exams 2015 result at the earliest.”

He said such anomalies have affected the teachers especially those teaching in SSA schools as they are deprived from availing the revised remuneration announced by the State Mission Authority Meghalaya (SEMAM, SSA).

Rymbai also expressed concern over the adamant attitude of the chairman of the NIOS, Noida Uttar Pradesh Dr Chandra Bhushan to address the grievances faced by the teachers.

“Therefore all the teachers vowed to inform the PM through this campaign on these grievances to ensure it be resolved in time bound manner,” he added.

4385 in-service untrained teachers have enrolled for D.EL.ED training programme as per RTE Act 2009 and NCTE norms in the 1st batch in December 2013. The state government had tied up with NIOS to implement the training programme.

However after a delay of over nine months, the result declared by the NIOS in September last year was found to be an incomplete.

In the proposed letter to the prime minister, the teachers highlighted the various anomalies which include the failure to include the internal assessment mark in the award sheet & marking absent on teachers who appeared the examination.

They have also demanded extension of the validity period of the course for the 1st batch, which has already expired on December last year.

“We urged you to find out a solution to the 15,822 teachers of which 75 percent are SSA school teachers in the state,” they stated in the letter.