‘Deadwood’ in J-K’s Education Department to be shown door in coming days

SRINAGAR — Government of Jammu and Kashmir is mulling to show the door to ‘non-performing’ teaching and non-teaching staff in the coming days, sources privy to the development in Education Department said.

Sources informed news agency Kashmir News Trust that after getting orders from the top, especially from Principal Secretary to Government – School Education Department Jammu & Kashmir Biswajit Kumar Singh, Director Education Kashmir Tasaduq Hussain Mir has asked Chief Education Officers, Zonal Education Officers and Head of Institutions to prepare a list of teaching and non-teaching employees who are non-performers or ‘deadwood’.

Sources added that this list will be furnished within 15 days and be sent to General Administration Department for action.

An official from Education Department on the condition of anonymity said that complaints had been pouring in from almost every Zone across Kashmir that a vast number of teachers are running side-business while some non-teaching staffers in different Zones resort to harassment and corrupt practices.

Principal Secretary to Government School Education Department Jammu & Kashmir Biswajit Kumar Singh in a communique to Director Education Kashmir Tasaduq Hussain Mir has stated that the Department of Education has huge number of employees and many of them are not performing their duties to the level of expectations and desired results, leading to large drop out and lower outcomes.

“How a Department having around 1:10 teacher-student ratio can have such a result,” he questioned.

In the middle of this month, General Administration Department had demanded list of deadwood teaching and non-teaching employees so that action against them should be initiated.

“You won’t believe in Gulab Bagh Srinagar Zone, some teachers have installed sign boards, publicizing their coaching centres. In Budgam Zone, some teachers are running shops while in Narbal Zone, some are acting as land brokers. This is the story of every Zone,” said the official.

A female teacher, on the condition of anonymity, said that she was demanded bribe at a Zonal Office the day she joined the office after getting selected through Service Selection Board.

Principal Secretary Biswajit Kumar Singh in the communique to Director Education Kashmir has again stated that it becomes inevitable to identify the non-working or deadwood in both teaching and non-teaching faculty who have either emptied the schools in enrolment by mostly resorting to private coaching, side business or have created corrupt and malicious work culture in offices which has put the public to great inconvenience and have proven counterproductive to the growth of the department.

“In this backdrop, you are hereby directed to prepare list of such employees as per the norms and furnish the list to this office within 15 days for onward transmission to General Administration for necessary action, otherwise serious action under rules will be taken,” the communique reads.