Srinagar
Police on Monday foiled a protest demonstration by Sarva Shiksha Abhiyan (SSA) teachers, who were protesting for the enhancement of their salaries at Partap park in Srinagar.
Hundreds of the SSA protestors assembled in Lal Chowk shouting anti-administration and anti-governmental slogans. The teachers were protesting against the inordinate delay by the government in de-linking SSA teachers’ salary from funds received from the government of India.
Soon police swung into action and chased away the protesting teachers resulting in chaos in Press Enclave and Lal Chowk areas. Police also resorted to cane charging and used water cannons after the protesting teachers tried to march towards the civil secretariat.
The protesting teachers alleged that police used lathis and chilli gas on them while many sustained injuries.
Besides this, several teachers were also arrested and lodged at Kothi Bagh Police station.
Strongly condemning the use of force on SSA Teachers agitating release of their pending salaries, Congress on Monday hit out at State government for being insensitive to the genuine demands of the teachers, who are facing hardships due to the indifferent attitude of the government.
The spokesman said Congress also urges upon government to stop victimizing SSA Teachers, as that, their demands were quite genuine deserved to be addressed on priority basis.
Seeking release of pending salaries of Teachers, the Spokesperson said that the ruling PDP BJP dispensation has miserably failed to resolve the problems confronting teachers, which is going to have serious implications on Education Sector of the State.
The demand of the teachers was quite genuine deserves to be addressed, but this is highly unfortunate that they were being responded with lathies, he added and emphasized that government must release salaries of SSA teachers to ensure that they can be able to sustain their families
