10 teachers injured and over a hundred detained outside Punjab CM’s residence

Protestors included unemployed ETT Teachers’ Union; Demanded the repeal of B.Ed entry in the Department’s cadres.

Teachers protesting outside the Punjab CM house

Image: The Tribune

TED NewsDesk, Chandigarh: Over 100 Elementary Teacher Training (ETT) teachers were detained and 10 injured after police cane-charged them for protesting outside of Chief Minister Amrinder Singh’s Patiala residence on Sunday.

Though the police in Patiala released them after a brief detention, several teachers were reported to have fractures.

The Unemployed ETT Teachers’ Union protests were to demand the repeal of the provision of B.Ed entry in the Department’s cadres. Besides dismissing the Education Department’s decision to permit B.Ed graduates to apply for the 2364 ETT posts advertised, the Union also demanded to advertise 10,000 new posts of ETT teachers.

DSP Sourav Jindal explained that the police had no other resort but to detain the proctors briefly after some of them became violent. But the Union President Deepak Kamboj maintained that “the police cane-charged them twice this month even during peaceful sit-in protests.”

“We have been protesting this decision for the last 3 months and we have been thrashed because we have raised our voices for our employment. This government’s promise of ‘Ghar Ghar Rozgar’ has not been met and we have been demanding our jobs for many years”, Deepak added.

While the state president of Shiromani Akali Dal (Democratic), Sukhdev Singh Dhindsa condemned the police’s cane-charging against the unemployed teachers, two ETT teachers have reportedly climbed up a mobile tower in the city and have been holding a protest for over a week there.