Over 1,000 protesting part-time teachers arrested in Chennai

Part-time teachers in TN govt schools arrested after 10-day protest for job regularisation & higher salaries. Govt announced measures to pacify them, incl. pay hike to ₹12,500 & medical insurance with ₹10 lakh coverage. Protesting teachers remain firm on demands.

Part-time teachers of government schools who have been staging an indefinite protest at the campus of the Directorate of Public Instruction (DPI) in Chennai for about 10 days now, were arrested in the early hours of Thursday. The teachers have been demanding that the government regularise their jobs, and give them higher salaries.

The protest began on September 25 with over 1,000 part-time teachers taking part in a fast at the DPI campus, asking to be absorbed as permanent employees of the government. Some teachers even brought in their children to the venue of the protest; a few protesters had fainted during the course of the fast.

Early on Thursday, police personnel entered the DPI campus and removed the protesting teachers. They were taken in vehicles arranged by the police, and were detained at a wedding hall in Pudupet and at the Rajarathinam Stadium. However, the teachers remained firm that their demands should be met by the government.

On Wednesday, October 4, 2023, T.N. School Education Minister Anbil Mahesh Poyyamozhi announced certain measures, in a bid to pacify the teachers, and appealed to them to return to work. On the demand of secondary grade teachers for “equal pay for equal work,” he said the three-member committee constituted to look into this issue would finalise its recommendations in three months. Regarding the demand of part-time teachers to regularise their employment and pay, the Minister said the consolidated pay of ₹10,000 they were receiving now would be increased to ₹12,500 henceforth.

However, teachers’ associations said the announcements by the government were disappointing.

According to the Tamil Nadu Special Teachers’ Association, over 16,459 part- time teachers were appointed in 2011 in government middle, high and higher secondary schools to improve multiple skills of students. They have been working on a consolidated pay basis for the last 12 years in streams such as physical education, computer science, tailoring, music, painting, horticulture, architecture and life skills. However their requests for pay hikes and regularisation of jobs have not been met so far, the association said.