Basic teachers start twitter drive for cashless treatment

LUCKNOW : After claiming that hundreds of their colleagues died of Covid in the recently concluded state panchayat polls, teachers of basic education department have now launched a campaign on twitter demanding cashless treatment for themselves.

They claim that central government employees are receiving free medical facilities. To apprise chief minister Yogi Adityanath and basic education minister Satish Chandra Dwivedi of their plight, teachers decided to run #CashlessTreatment4UPTeachers on May 25.

“The campaign has shown a huge participation and resulted into more than l lakh tweets which is the proof of the pain of these government staff,” claimed Khaliq Ahmad, a teacher of Sitapur district.

“In fact, a common man at present is having Ayushman Bharat health card. Among the state government employees, only teachers are not covered by any type of health insurance, medical facilities and are deprived of Ayushman health scheme too,” claimed Chhavi Agarwal, a teacher in a government primary school in Varanasi.

Teachers are engaged in a number of duties like ration distribution in villages, late night surveillance and others. Earlier this month, UP primary school teachers’ association claimed that more than 1600 government school staff had lost their lives during panchayat polls. However, the department rejected their data.

Finally, chief minister Yogi Adityanath on May 20 said the government and the state election commission should amend rules to help the kin of those who lost their lives on poll duty may get ex gratia.

Earlier on April 22, primary and secondary government teachers jointly carried out an online campaign on twitter #PostponeUPElection to air their grievances against the panchayat polls, alleging that many of their fellow teachers had contracted Covid infection during training and poll duty.

With over 94K tweets, it was among top trending hashtag as teachers from across the state participated in the campaign, urging the state government to postpone the panchayat polls.