Additional Tamil teachers to North-East schools

[TamilNet, Saturday, 21 August 1999, 14:29 GMT]
The education of Tamil students in the Muttur area in the Trincomalee district, especially in the areas held by the Liberation Tigers, has been badly affected due to the acute shortage of teachers, parents complain.

Several Tamil schools in the Muttur area have no qualified teachers to teach English language, mathematics and science. Due to this, more students fail in these subjects at the G.C.E. O/L examinations, school authorities said.

There are about fifty vacancies for teachers in Muttur Tamil schools at present, said Mr.Sundaram Divakalala, Secretary of the Provincial Ministry of Education Cultural Affairs and Sports.

The Ministry of Education and Higher Education has now given permission to appoint 339 Tamil medium teachers in the North East (N-E) province. The Educational Services Committee has sent a list of teachers to be appointed after proper interviews, to the provincial ministry of Education. Of this 48 Tamil medium teachers are to be appointed in the Trincomalee district. The appointments will be given after the interview scheduled to be held on August 31.

These new teachers would be posted to the remote Tamil schools in the Muttur area, said Mr.Sundaram Divakalala, provincial ministry secretary.

But parents express fear that the teachers posted to remote Tamil schools would use their political influence to get back to urban areas after some months. Earlier too, teachers posted to remote schools in the Muttur area were transferred out to urban schools after some time by the department of education, yielding to the political pressure, they say.

"This time, we would not yield to the political pressure. We are now firm to post the newly appointed teachers to the remote schools in the Muttur area," a high official of the provincial education ministry said.