Different and discordant picture of Teachers’ Day
SILCHAR, September 5: Teachers’ Day is no doubt a day of joy and happiness for the teachers who are honoured and felicitated by the district administration. 80 teachers in all felicitated in the three districts of Cachar, Karimganj and Hailakandi today must have felt so. But, there have been teachers aggrieved for their grievances unresolved might have felt differently and quite naturally so. These teachers in question after retirement have been faced with extreme financial distress and on this happy occasion, they are the picture of discordant.
11 teachers of primary schools in Hailakandi even after their retirement have not received their gratuity due to a scam in the Deputy Inspector of Schools of the district. Though four years have passed since the scam came to light, the police is yet to file charge–sheet against the accused identified. The accused had siphoned off Rs 38 lakh which was to be paid as gratuity to the 11 teachers. Some of them in their sickness are unable to go for medical treatment in a good hospital or nursing home. The fate of their gratuity payment despite all their best efforts looks uncertain. For them, Teachers’ Day has no meaning or significance.
These unfortunate LP school teachers are Deb Singha, Ismail Ali Barbhuiya, and others. This gratuity scam took place in October 2009.
Here is yet another picture of a teacher Sarif Uddin Barbhuiya, headmaster of a school at Badlabadli in the remote southern part of Hailakandi district. He was kidnapped by miscreants 16 days ago. There is no information about him till now. In protest against the failure of the police to trace him out and release him from the clutch of the miscreants, teachers of the school have boycotted the Teachers’ Day celebration even though they have been present in the school, wearing black badges. The boycott is also to express their support and sympathy for the members of the family of Sarif Uddin Barbhuiya who are passing their days in extreme mental agony.
For 55–year–old school teacher, Motirmoy Das of Masimpur village, who teaches in Haji Hamid Raja Memorial School at Mazumdar Bazar near this town as Science teacher, this day was observed by him with the pledge to sit for death unto fast. The reason is that though he has been teaching in the school set up on the land donated by him since 1987, he continues to be a teacher without any future. Neither the school has been provincialized nor his services to be qualified to receive the salary due to him. He has to supplement his meagre income with the job of a hawker of newspapers. He wants justice for his long 25 years of teaching in the school of his dream and vision.
Source: The Sentinel 06.09.2013
