Thaindian News

New Delhi, June 6 (IANS) It has been two years since a high court order, but the Delhi government is yet to recruit permanent teachers for differently-abled children in its schools.

On Sep 15, 2009, the court had directed the Delhi government, the Municipal Corporation of Delhi (MCD) and New Delhi Municipal Council (NDMC) to employ at least two special teachers on a permanent basis for differently-abled children in each of their schools. Around 3,000 schools are run by these bodies.

Responding to the court’s directive, the government had set up a recruitment board and created 926 posts for special teachers who were to be appointed by January 2011. Besides that, MCD had also announced the creation of 1,700 posts of special teachers.

However, the government and the civic agency have not appointed even a single teacher on a permanent basis, says lawyer Ashok Agarwal, in response to whose petition the high court had issued the order.

“Those were just tall claims. Let alone hiring teachers, the government has not yet issued an advertisement to invite applications for the job,” Agarwal told IANS.

“There is no cooperation between the government departments and the matter is currently stuck with the Delhi Subordinate Services Selection Board (DSSSB),” he said.

DSSSB is a Delhi government department which handles the recruitment of staff in MCD, NDMC and government schools.

Currently, there are around 200,000 disabled children in the city, of whom very few are enrolled in schools. And the number of those studying in government, MCD and NDMC schools has dropped significantly due to the absence of special teachers.

The Delhi government, however, claimed this is not true. “We have hired around 300 specially-trained teachers on a contractual basis with a monthly salary of Rs.16,000,” said R.P. Yadav, who is deputy director of Delhi’s Education Department for the north district.

“The process of recruiting permanent teachers is under way and will be completed soon. Currently, around 25,000 disabled children are studying in Classes 1 to 8 and over 7,000 in Classes 9 to 12 in our schools,” he added.

However, MCD has not even created the posts for these special teachers, let alone employing them.

“We have sent recruitment regulation to the Urban Development Ministry and the matter for creating these posts is lying with the ministry,” said Ashok Sharma, assistant director with MCD’s education department.

“And we have hired some teachers on a contractual basis. Once we get the confirmation we will advertise these posts,” he added.

Agarwal, however, rubbished the claims, and said 300 teachers were hired under the Sarva Shiksha Abhiyan scheme and they hardly ever visited the schools.

He pointed out that even with the 300 teachers, the ratio stood at an unimaginable 10 schools per teacher.

(Gaurav Sharma can be contacted at sharmagaurav71@gmail.com)