Teachers’ body seeks immediate steps to address issues, threatens state-wide strike

Leaders of Andhra Pradesh Teachers’ Federation (APTF) have called for district and state-level protests, demanding immediate steps for the resolution of their long-standing financial issues and other grievances.

The federation’s state president G. Hrudaya Raju and general secretary S. Chiranjeevi said they met Chief Secretary Neerabh Kumar Prasad on Thursday (November 21) at the Secretariat and served the protest notice.

They said the federation would organise district-level protests on December 20 and 21, and if their demands go unheeded, they would escalate it to a state-level agitation. They said the government should immediately release arrears worth ₹22,000 crore due for payment to teachers, other employees and pensioners in the State.

Their other demands include the release of 11^th PRC arrears, five pending DAs and surrendered leave encashment dues. They want the government to appoint a commissioner to the 12^th PRC and announce an Interim relief of 30% until the report is submitted, announce two new DAs without any delay, repeal of the Contributory Pension Scheme (CPS) and implementation of the Old Pension Scheme and payment of 90% of the CPS employees’ DA in cash and deposit the remaining 10% deductions into the National Securities Depository Limited (NSDL) without delay.

They urged the government to take up appointment of teachers in schools managed by the Panchayat Raj Department on compassionate grounds and implement GOs 72, 73 and 74 to facilitate promotions for junior college and DIET lecturers, deputy education officers and principals.

Pointing to “non-teaching activities and app-based tasks”, they said it put additional burden on teachers and demanded their removal. They also urged the authorities to continue parallel mediums in school education.

They said the government should formulate service rules for municipal teachers and assign provident fund account numbers to them for effective management, regularise services of contract teachers from the DSC 1998 and 2008 batches and increase their retirement age to 62 years.

Taking exception to the increasing working hours for high schools, they urged the authorities to continue the previous school timings and also demanded repeal of GO 117 and formulation of scientific methods for permanent transfer policies.