Mumbai: Many unemployed professional Urdu teachers and guardians of Urdu medium school students in Bhiwandi have got a reason to be happy as Maharashtra government appointed 137 Urdu teachers in the last two weeks for the schools run by Bhiwandi Municipal Corporation.
The appointment of the teachers in a short span of December 29, 2008 and January 9, 2009 is seen as the outcome of constant efforts by the unemployed teachers' organization 'Bairozgar Primary Teachers Association'.
The association has expressed pleasure over the development. The president of the association Aslam Chhote Khan said, 'We are very happy that our efforts bore fruits and we have got employment. Our eight colleagues who joined hands with us in our movement, however, still remain unemployed due to overage. We have filed a writ petition for them in Mumbai High Court. The court will hear the case on January 20, and we expect a positive verdict.'
The organization has been demanding since December 2000 for the appointment of more Urdu teachers to balance the teacher-student ratio. With the new appointments, 'Now there is one teacher for 40 students,' Aslam says comparing it to the time when a large number of one thousand students had only one teacher.
On why he launched the movement he said: 'On one hand I saw that there were many DEds wandering unemployed while on the other I found that a school comprising three rooms in Shantinagar of Bhiwandi, for example, had only one teacher for one thousand students. It gave me inspiration to do something for the unemployed teachers and the future of the students,' told Aslam.
The latest appointment of teachers is a big success of the organization which conducted 22 hunger strikes in Azad Maidan, 8 in Bhiwandi itself and 2 in Pune under scorching sun and raining sky. Several teachers fell ill during the strike and had to be taken to hospitals in Mumbai and Bhiwandi. Due to the struggle of the association 246 Urdu teachers, including the new 137, have been appointed only in eight years. Earlier merely 10-15 Urdu teachers were appointed per year. Aslam said that before they started their struggle, only 210 Urdu teachers were appointed during 20 years.
The city of Bhiwandi, the largest power loom centre in India, is known as the 'Manchester of India' and it is located in West Maharashtra district of Thane. The city, which began to be inhabited by Maharashtrian and Kokani Muslims in the early twentieth century, has a population of 598,703 with Muslims in majority, as per the 2001 census. The average literacy rate of the city is 66%.
The Municipal Corporation of Bhiwandi runs 76 schools, of which 34 are Urdu medium. The rest of the schools are Marathi, Hindi, Tamil, Telugu and Kannada medium. However, given the rise in population there is a need for opening more schools with necessary facilities in the city area. Aslam Khan told, 'There is an immediate need of at least 10 schools on big scale. The present schools are devoid of even basic amenities; electricity and suitable rooms etc.’
No comments:
Post a Comment