TURA: Contractual teachers from Garo Hills who failed to clear the mandatory Meghalaya Teacher Eligibility Test (MTET) have appealed to the Meghalaya Government to retain them in their post cautioning that failure to heed their pleas would lead to many families going bankrupt.
“There are over 1200 contractual government LP school teachers in the state, out of which, only around 110 of them have managed to clear the MTET examination. If the rest of the teachers who have been rendering their services for many years are terminated from services, then many families will be destroyed. Any abrupt move by the government may even lead to loss of lives,” General Secretary of the All Garo Hills Contractual Teachers’ Association (AGHCTA), P D Marak said.
Marak said that in order to work in the profession, the teachers had undergone DIET training and NIOS D.El Ed, ten days and five days training which was sponsored by the government by offering Rs 5000 as stipend. However, even after undergoing such government sponsored training, their fate was going to be decided by a one-day MTET exam.
Marak claimed that while the Assam government had conducted Special TET to absorb teachers already in service, several appeals made by the teachers for the same were ignored by the government in the state.
“We had made several requests to the government to provide us special TET to enhance our performance but the government never responded to our requests. The services of as many as 46000 contractual teachers are set to be regularized in Assam, but we in Meghalaya are facing termination,” Marak said.