Bengaluru teachers oppose assignments related to COVID-19

Even as the government is trying to rope in teachers across the state for the COVID-19-related work, they have expressed their unwillingness to get engaged in the work.

Recently, the Department of Public Instructions had directed the government and the government-aided school teachers to chip in for surveillance activity, preferably in areas under the Bruhat Bengaluru Mahanagara Palike (BBMP) jurisdiction.

Issuing an order, the department said the teachers should be engaged in information dissemination, education and communication activities as well as other activities related to surveillance.

“...any disobedience or absence shall be viewed seriously. Action will be taken under the Epidemic diseases act 1897,” the order stated.

However, the Karnataka State Primary School Teachers’ Association has requested the primary and secondary education minister, chief secretary and principal secretary of the primary and secondary education department, to exempt from the work.

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Chandrashekar Nuggi, general secretary of the association, said: “We teachers have no knowledge of the disease, and the government is putting our lives at risk by deploying us.”

“We have requested the minister and officials to utilise teachers under the Ayush department and who have knowledge about the medical emergency and the current crisis,” Nuggi added.

The BBMP has ordered its teachers to attend the training programme on April 2.

“We will request the chief secretary to spare us from this work. All these years we have not denied any work the government has assigned us, including census. But with the COVID-19 work, we cannot risk our lives and lives of our family members, who have depended on us,” said Nuggi.

Contact teams

Recently, Chief Secretary T M Vijay Bhaskar had asked the Commissioner of Public Instructions, BBMP, and Health and Family Welfare, to form 100 primary contact teams and 900 secondary contact teams within the Palike limits. The primary teams will consist
of one paramedical staff and one teacher and the secondary teams will have two
teachers.

Plan of action

The commissioners are also asked to provide a list of members (teachers and paramedics) and prepare a plan. According to the plan, for every 20 teams, a special officer will lead the team. There will also be another inquiry team headed by a group ‘A’ or ‘B’ employee of the government along with one BBMP staff to be appointed.

A senior officer said: “These teams must help in the smooth running of activities taken up to contain COVID-19. There are various works like we have IEC materials that need to be disseminated to the public and the teachers will have a good hold on this. We might ask the public to contact these teams for any kind of information.”

The zonal special commissioners of BBMP will assign work to the teams. “There is no need to go to everyone’s door. They have to manage the awareness programmes,” said a BBMP officer.