Schools fear disruptions without now-dismissed gr C, D staff

As the month-long summer vacations come to an end, government-aided schools across Bengal resumed classes from Monday. The schools are dealing with the invalidation of around 26,000 teachers and non-teaching employees, following a recent Supreme Court verdict.

Headmasters and headmistresses of secondary and higher secondary schools in the state fear that there would be disruptions in normal academic activities in schools in the coming six months owing to severe shortage in adequate group C and D staff.

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With the directive of the apex court around 7,000 group C and D employees, the main workforce in schools, have lost their jobs.

“We don’t know how to run schools for the coming six months till 31 December without the service of group C and D employees. They bear a major workload mainly related to non-teaching work in normal running of schools. It would be difficult to tackle the situation for so many months,” said Chandan Maiti, state secretary of Advanced Society for Headmasters and Headmistresses.

“Group D staff look after jobs like cleaning of classrooms and school premises, locking and unlocking of main gate, classrooms, teachers’ rooms etc while the employees belonging to the C category are assigned for handling admissions of students, audit and account matters, and implementations of different state government schemes like Sabuj Sathi, Kanyashree etc,” Mr Maiti said.

The group C staff also look after matters like salary and pensions of teachers.

One headmaster of a higher secondary school in Howrah said that the state government should have also taken into account the issue of the group C and D employees while it filed a review petition in the apex court.

In its review petition the state government has requested the court seeking time for the teachers.