An Indian doctor interacts with a journalist before conducting his swab test during lockdown to control the spread of the new coronavirus in Mumbai, India, Thursday, April 16, 2020. Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi on Tuesday extended the world's largest coronavirus lockdown to head off the epidemic's peak, with officials racing to make up for lost time. (AP Photo/Rafiq Maqbool)
KEY STORY
The PU teachers association has threatened that the teachers would not report for exam and evaluation duties if they are not given two doses of Covid-19 vaccination.
Following the spike in Covid-19 cases and high rate of infections among the teachers in the last wave, Karnataka State Pre-University College Teachers’ Association has demanded the state government to vaccinate all teachers who will be used for examination and evaluation work this year.
“The state government should ensure completion of two doses of vaccination to all our teachers before assigning them examination and evaluation duties. We are firm on this decision and we will not be taking part in any such work unless we are vaccinated,” said A H Ningegowda, president of the association.
Last year, 11 teachers, who were deputed on exam/evaluation works, had died of Covid-19. “We do not want any such incidents to repeat this year. If the government wants us to take part in the examination and evaluation work, it must vaccinate PU teachers,” Ningegowda said.
There are over 23,000-plus teachers working with government and aided PU colleges and 18,000 in unaided colleges. During 2020 exams the evaluation was conducted for 54 days as against the regular 20 days. Around 18,177 teachers took part in the evaluation work which was held at 53 centres across the state.
Meanwhile, the pre-university college teachers have urged the department to adopt digital evaluation and avoid physical evaluation of answer scripts this year considering the pandemic situation.
CONCLUSION
“It is not a difficult task if the department trains us for a few days before implementing digital evaluation. This will save time and also ensure safety of teachers. Instead of going to evaluation centres taking all the risk, they can evaluate sitting at their homes,” said another member of the association.
The association has urged the department to take assistance from Rajiv Gandhi University of Health Sciences and Bangalore University, which have successfully conducted digital evaluation.
