Patna: Teachers Strike. Colleges Remained Closed

Teachers of Patna are at strike for three days since Monday. Most of the colleges and Universities were remained closed in Bihar. It was around 30,000 Non-teaching staffs who went for a hard strike in protest against the non-fulfilment of their long-pending demands.

Almost all the campuses wore a deserted look as no employee had attended for duty. Regarding to the strike Magadh University (MU) has already postponed all its examinations which were scheduled to be held from Monday to Wednesday. More than 500 employees of Magad and Veer Kuer Singh Universities sat on Dharna at R-Block railway crossing here in support of their demands, whereas employees of other universities staged demonstration before their respective university headquarters.

In Patna, the employees dharna was led by Bihar State University and College Employees including the federation leaders Bimal Prasad Singh, Braj Kishore Singh and Rohit Kumar. This is not for the first time teachers have come down for strike, but earlier too, they had resorted a four-day in July without any tangible results. Federation President Ganga Prasad Jha said that due to anomalies in the fifth pay revision, most employees were getting half of their salaries.

Besides, all these, in the sixth pay revision, they have been denied the benefit of Assured Career Promotion (ACP) scheme. And the retirement of non-teaching staff has been changed to 65 years while the teachers have been given this benefit. He further said that despite their repeated requests, the government is unnecessarily dragging the poor employees to court for settlement of even their genuine demands, they had claimed for.

In the year 2008, the Patna High Court had directed the state government to implement its agreement within a month, but instead of honouring its commitment, the government moved the Supreme Court. They appealed the Chief Minister to expedite early settlement of their demands with a view to restoring academic normality in the state.