By IANS,
Lucknow : The entire teaching and non-teaching staff of the central government’s 586 Jawahar Navodaya Vidyalayas (JNV) across India has decided to work with a black arm bands to protest the government indifference to their demands.
The symbolic protest started Nov 2 and will continue across the country till Nov 7.
“All of us, including the teaching and non-teaching staff, are central government employees but we are deprived of the facilities provided to other central government employees ever since the schools came into existence,” said Jagdish Rai, the president of the Navodaya Vidyalaya Employees Association (NVEA).
A brain-child of former prime minister, late Rajiv Gandhi, the JNVs were established across the in country in 1986 to provide higher secondary education to children residing in rural areas. Currently there are 586 JNVs in the country providing free education to students from classes 6th to 12th.
“We do not have the privilege of pension after retirement and neither we are eligible to get the 10 percent special allowance announced in the Sixth Pay Commission to our counterparts in the Indira Gandhi National Open University and other educational organisations run by the central government,” Rai added.
“We will stage a protest at the Jantar Mantar Nov 9 and will go on a day’s country-wide strike Nov 16. We only demand equality like our counterparts,” L.B.Reddy, a teacher in a JNV in Hyderabad, told IANS.