From Daniel Kamei
TAMENGLONG, Mar 25 : Election time is a punishment for government employees, especially the school headmasters and assistant teachers who are engaged in the election process. A date was fixed and notice was served for training of the presiding and polling officers for handling of electronic voting machines and smooth conduct of up coming Lok Sabha elections. However, very few personnel turned up for the training today.
As many as 694 polling officers and presiding officers were supposed to undergo training but only 297 turned up today, out of which there were 103 presiding officers, 96 polling officer (1) and 98 polling officers (2).
The returning officer while speaking to the IFP said that the officers who did not turn up for training today must attend tomorrow (March 25), failing which disciplinary action would be taken up against them. The security teams will start arriving by the next week, the official added.
The district administration is going to engage around 720 personnel from different departments, including school headmasters and assistant teachers. Out of this number, 650 personnel will be utilized for duty and other 70 will be kept as reserve, the official source said.
Some school headmasters and assistant teachers have been engaged from the very beginning of preparation for elections and normal classes in many schools have been disturbed. Starting from enumerators, taking census addition and deletion and till the voting day and counting, the school headmasters and assistant teachers are used as tools of the government though the teachers’ duty is only to bring quality education, said the Tamenglong District Teachers Association and District Council Teachers Association members during an interview.
Involvement in election duty is also our duty and we cannot deny it, a teacher said. “To attend the training my school has announced holidays for the children,” narrated one headmaster adding that “with bad infrastructure and shortage of teachers along with all other disturbances we cannot bring quality education.”
A teacher suggested that if the government picks up one school headmaster or assistant teacher from each school, the normal classes would not be disturbed.