SHILLONG, OCT 7: Under pressure, the Meghalaya Democratic Alliance government on Friday decided to grant ‘age condonation’ to over 800 contractual teachers to allow them to reappear for the upcoming Meghalaya Teachers’ Eligibility Test (MTET) examination for appointment as regular teachers.
This was informed by the education minister Lahkmen Rymbui to the delegation of the Meghalaya Government Lower Primary Contractual Teachers’ Association (MGLPCTA) during a meeting in his office chamber here.
This also came a day after the agitating contractual teachers along with their children and family members were tear-gassed while taking out a protest march to the secretariat to demand for reinstatement of their services.
Welcoming the government’s decision, the MGLPCTA has called off their one-month long indefinite sit-in-protest.
After the meeting, Rymbui told reporters that he had conveyed to the delegation of the contractual teachers that regularization of their services is out of the question and that only one-time condonation of age could be granted to them for appearing the MTET.
“We will help them (by granting) the age condonation as per law but beyond that it will be a contempt of court order,” he said while referring to a judgment passed by the Meghalaya High Court that the “contractual teachers have no rights for regularization”.
According to him, the decision was taken as many of the teachers are already on the wrong side of the age for the recruitment process.
On the question raised with regards to the delay of the government to conduct the MTET examination, Rymbui said, “The question was asked when MTET was mandated since 2010 why we conducted it in 2019, this is because we don’t want to discontinue the services of the contractual teachers and we want them to attain the minimum qualification set up by the NCTE.”
Stating that a fresh MTET examination will be conducted very soon, the education minister said he wanted the department to complete the roster system so that examination can be conducted for the vacant teacher posts across the state.
According to him, there are over 2,000 youth, who have met all qualifications and are waiting to enter the teaching profession in the state.
“Let us hope in the next few weeks we will be able to complete the roster system and advertise for the posts and complete the recruitment process,” he said.
Meanwhile, Rymbui, who is also the home minister of the state, said that the home department has sought a report from the district administration on the tear-gas incident, which has drawn severe criticism from several quarters of society.
“The home department is seeking a report from the district administration so that we will know the true picture of what had happened yesterday as there are two sides of the matter – one is that section 144 CrPC is being imposed and permission to take out protest march was not granted and inspite of that there was violation. Therefore, all these things will come up (in the report),” he said while assuring “If any person violate the law, we are here not to protect anybody but due legal process will follow.”
With children and pregnant mothers being affected by the tear gas incident, the home minister admitted that the law enforcing agency should use minimum intervention to see that any disturbance or any incidents should not create unnecessary difficulty to anybody even as reiterated that action will be taken as per the report submitted by the district administration.
Later while informing the decision of the teachers to call off the indefinite protest, president of the MGLPCTA Birbor Riangtem informed that the Supreme Court has also passed an order allowing the contractual teachers to reappear for the MTET examination without taking into consideration that “we are overage”.
“There were also relaxations in many aspects which include cut off marks. We are quite happy with the order of the apex court,” he said.
When asked, Riangtem said the state government has also agreed to grant them with age condonation so that they are eligible to appear for MTET.
“During the meeting with Rymbui, we told him that we are too old to go for MTET but he said if they help (in this regard) it will only put the government in trouble. Therefore, the government has decided to relax the age for such teachers,” he said.
He said the Assam government had conducted special TET exams for over 50,000 teachers for regularization. However, those who failed to clear the exam were allowed to continue on contractual basis.
Earlier, Rymbui also clarified about the appointment process of teachers at the Dadenggre subdivision. He said there was a leakage of question paper when MTET was conducted in the state and it was found that the incident was confined only in Dadenggre subdivision.
The delay in the recruitment process was due to the MDC elections and bye election. Subsequent to this, due to the High Court order for implementing the roster system, the government could not conduct the exams and due to this the teachers were asked to continue under contractual basis, he added.
By Our Reporter
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