Unhappy over haphazard selection of city schools for census duty as certain peers get exempted.
Several teachers from city schools are miffed with the fact that many of their peers from other aided schools won’t have to forego their summer vacations for census duty.
To add to their woes, the same set of teachers was also picked for election duty last year. While pregnant and old teachers, who have genuine reasons to skip census duty, will have to be present, many city schools have been randomly exempted from census duty.
“There is no reason why some schools have been completely exempted from census duty, while some schools have been asked to depute 100% of their secondary school staff members,” said principal of a South Mumbai school. “Census duty has to be completed over a period of 45 days, which will mean these set of teachers lose their summer vacation completely. Most of them have already worked on election duty. This is unfair to our teachers.”
A Byculla school teacher, who is seven months pregnant, asked for an exemption on health grounds, but her request was declined. “Since roaming around from door to door in the summer heat will be a problem for me, I asked them to exempt me from the job. They refused to exempt me completely, and assured that I would be given a desk job. When several other schools have been exempted for no reason, why can’t they consider a genuine case?” the teacher said.
Another teacher, suffering from arthritis, said the area that she has been assigned has buildings without lifts. “My request was turned down by the local officer during the registration process,” the teacher said.
The South Mumbai school principal said that teachers are also called for a three-day training program next week, which is the time when they are supposed to be preparing mark sheets.
While the training for census duty is scheduled for next Monday, Tuesday and Wednesday between 10am and 5pm, the exact time table for census duty will be given to teachers during the training.
Each teacher will have to collect data from around 150 houses in the area allotted to them. However, teachers claimed that they will have to actually cover 150-600 houses.
A principal, who is facing problems assuring her teachers that the school did not have any role to play in the allocation of duty, said: “Some of my teachers have heard that the principals from the exempted schools have gone personally to make requests.
The Brihanmumbai Municipal Corporation (BMC) should have divided the work proportionately among aided schools,” the principal said.
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