Kathmandu, November 11:

Temporary teachers of public schools from 56 districts today took out a silent rally from Babarmahal to Baneshwor demanding they be made permanent. The teachers had submitted a memorandum to the Ministry of Education and Sports (MoES) yesterday urging it to solve their problem at the earliest.

The government had reached an agreement with the joint teachers’ struggle committee two years ago whereby the former had decided to reserve 50 per cent of the seats for temporary working and displaced teachers in the examination that would select them as permanent teachers. However, the around 22,000 temporary teachers have been demanding that all of them be made permanent.

The spokesperson of the Education Ministry, Laba Prasad Tripathee, said the problem could be easily solved through talks. “The temporary teachers should at least wait for the results of the examination conducted to make some of them permanent,” he said. “However, the temporary teachers’ demands cannot be met as quality must be maintained.” he added.

The temporary teachers had demanded the government provide them permanent licences and it roll back its decision to depute teachers where they have been facing Maoist threats.

The seven-point charter of demands also included a formation of integrated education development programmes, fulfillment of all prior commitments made by the government, stopping transfer of school management to communities without proper homework, private school teachers’ salary on par with that of public school teachers, making a provision whereby the pensioners can get their money from the nearest bank and taking back the decision to curtail the number of teachers in the country.