IMPHAL, November 16: All Tribal Students` Union Manipur has served and ultimatum to the government in a memorandum submitted on November 12 to the government, calling it to consider tribal problems pending for the last eight years as agreed with the ATSUM earlier.
The ATSUM spokesperson Joseph said if the government failed to do this it would launch an agitation.
Speaking to the media at the office of the ATSUM at the Tribal Market New Chekon Imphal he said ATSUM under the leadership of Emboi Serto regrets that the government is turning a deaf ear to their demands.
He said these demands include regularisation of 1285 contract teachers recruited in year 2006 for the various post of the school in hills. Even though the government has conducted physical verification for regularising the teachers, no follow up action has been forthcoming since.
Keeping in view the demand for merger of hills schools to the Nagaland Board, the State government and ATSUM had signed an agreement to have a separate Directorate for the hill schools. The additional director was to look after the issues of Hills schools but during the tenure of former education minister Jayenta and Director Education Hare Krishna the matter of forming an additional Directorate has been forgotten.
On the question of grant-in-aid problem, of the 18 government schools, the government had approved eight schools for the benefit, but till date no school has been upgraded as per the approval the ATSUM spokesman said.
Now tribal students from the villages have to spend Rs. 2000 to Rs. 2500 to study in their district headquarters, he said.
Joshep said that government is taking advantage on the disunity of tribal organisations and students bodies to continue with its delaying tactics.
The Tribal Language problem is also one of the concerns which ATSUM raised. Nothing much has been done to promote tribal languages too, he said.
He said, the Autonomous District Council, ADCs, are also in a sorry state now, though the State government as no power is devolved to them.
He also talked of the pending issues of reservation for tribals in education. The State government had agreed to constitute a sub-committee with the Chief Secretary as chairperson and other officials to look into the 200 point roster plan of ATSUM in February. But this too has been forgotten, he said.
The ATSUM warned that if November 12 memorandum is not given any attention, it will launch an agitation.
Read more / Original news source: http://kanglaonline.com/2014/11/atsum-to-launch-agitation-if-government-does-not-respond-to-its-demands/