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NEWS Updates - 19
Feb 2009 |
* Were They ARE? Pro-freedom top brass not in State
* 300 non-Urdu speaking teachers to teach Urdu in Valley
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‘Free our resources from exploitation’ Mufti Sayeed
* Common man relieved -
Strike Ended |
Were They ARE? Pro-freedom top brass not in State :
Srinagar, Feb 18: In the pro-freedom camp there is a
leadership vacuum as most of the top-rung leaders are
outside the state for various reasons, and several
others are locked up inside jails.
Hurriyat (G) chairman Syed Ali Shah Geelani, Hurriyat
(M) chairman Mirwaiz Umar Farooq, JKLF chairman Muhammad
Yaseen Malik, Peoples Conference leader Sajjad Gani
Lone, former Hurriyat (M) chairman Prof Abdul Gani Bhat
are either in India or Pakistan.
Prof Gani was the first to leave, just before the start
of assembly elections in November 2008. He is in
Pakistan since.
Sajjad Lone left Kashmir for Pakistan in January 2009 to
meet his family stranded there as government has denied
travel documents to them. While JKLF supreme Yasin Malik
is tying nuptials with a UK-born Pakistani artist Mushal
Mullick on February 22.
Veteran leader, Geelani, is in Delhi since January for
treatment. Last to leave Kashmir in the list was Mirwaiz
who left in the last week of January. It has been learnt
that he is in Bangalore.
With leaders like Shabir Ahmad Shah, Nayeem Ahmad Khan,
Masrat Alam Bhat and Nanaji Saleem in prisons, there is
vacuum in the pro-freedom camp.
A senior analyst commenting on the issue said, “At a
time when the pro-freedom leadership should have been in
Kashmir to assess the situation after their boycott call
in Assembly elections failed miserably, they preferred
to remain away. People are already demoralized with the
policies of pro-freedom leadership and it will have
negative effect in the coming parliamentary elections.”
But the spokesmen of two Hurriyats have another view.
Ayaz Akbar, the spokesman of Hurriyat (G) said, “Geelani
Sahib is not on a pleasure trip, but for treatment in
Delhi. He would be back in the first week of March”
The Hurriyat (M) spokesman, Saleem Geelani said,
“Whether in Delhi or here, Mirwaiz is the chairman and
performing his duties.” They said the “leaders are human
beings with personal problems.” |
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300 non-Urdu speaking teachers to teach
Urdu in Valley : Srinagar, Feb
18: Thanks to the reservation rules 2005
and the subsequent amendments, Jammu and
Kashmir, where Urdu has survived many an
overt and covert onslaughts to stick as
the state’s official language, has got
its quota of around 300 teachers to
teach the subject. Although most of them
belong to the Dogri-speaking areas of
Jammu, Kathua, Samba and Udhampur
districts, they have been posted to the
valley-based government schools.
However, well placed official sources
told Greater Kashmir, most such teachers
were ‘illiterate’ as far as their
knowledge of Urdu was concerned. Not
merely Urdu, the recruits cannot even
teach any other subject in the schools
where the medium of instruction is Urdu,
as they are conversant with none except
their mother tongue, Dogri. A majority
of the recruits stand selected on the
basis of 10+2 qualification. “The
language handicap during their posting
in Kashmir-based schools is bound to
spell the doom for education sector,
that too at the elementary stage,” the
sources said.
The piquant situation has put the
education department officials in a
dilemma of sorts as they are finding it
difficult to utilize the services of the
recruits. The amendment in the
recruitment rules that allows any
aspirant from any district to apply for
any district cadre post even in any
other district has spelt disaster for
the education and other departments in
that the aliens who hardly have any
knowledge of ethos, customs, traditions
and above all lack knowledge of the
local language cannot be expected to
deliver.
Talking to Greater Kashmir on the
condition of anonymity, a senior
official of Education Department said
the recruits were going to be a
liability rather than an asset as
majority of them with 10+2 qualification
could not deliver. Another official of
the department criticized the
recruitment policy of the department.
“Let the government shift these recruits
to schools in their places of domicile
and spare our children the ill effects
of the policy of appointing nincompoops
as teachers,” said Munshi Ghulam Hussain,
a senior citizen from downtown.
An uptown resident, Mohi-ud-din Ahmad,
said, “It is a pity that while we have
an army of trained graduate and post
graduate teachers without a job,
candidates with mere 10+2 and that too
without any knowledge of the medium of
instruction have been thrust on us.”
With such a policy the government is
going to ruin our children and mar their
future. On one hand the powers that be
ask our youth to ready themselves for
competitions and on the other their fate
is sealed with such policies, said a
teacher, Ali Mohammad Bhat.
According to informed sources, the
Education Department is facing similar
situation in Jammu’s Dogri speaking
districts where several Scheduled Tribe
candidates having studied in Urdu medium
schools and lacking knowledge of Hindi
or Dogri have been appointed as a
consequence of free-for all policy on
recruitments.
Despite repeated attempts, the education
minister, Peerzada Muhammad Syed,
couldn’t be contacted for his comments.
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‘Free our resources from exploitation’
Jammu, Feb 15: Former chief minister and
patron of Peoples Democratic Party (PDP)
Patron Mufti Muhammad Sayed Sunday said
the state’s natural and water resources
should be freed from arbitrary
exploitation, as this exploitation has
made a begging bowl of our economy, a
PDP spokesman said.
Sayed told his party workers here that
state’s political leadership should
highlight the issue of unfair treatment
on the economic front than seeking
packages and doles. With fresh resolve
the political leadership should bring
into focus the unfair treatment in the
form of discriminatory Indus Water
Treaty (IWT) and the arbitrary
exploitation of our water resources by
the NHPC, Mufti said.
He said the PDP would launch a concerted
struggle to protect the political and
economic interests of the State.
“It is a pity that while rest of the
country enjoys electricity generated
from our water resources, we are forced
to live in darkness,” he said, adding
the harsh winters in Kashmir and Ladakh
and hot summers in Jammu make the life a
hell in absence of electricity.
Mufti said people of the state must
struggle together to seek adequate
compensatory and remedial measures. “To
our economic prosperity is linked the
future of our young boys and girls, who
otherwise are forced to look towards
Class-IV jobs for sustenance,” he said.
With the surrender of our rights on
water, our premier resource, government
is ironically now forced to look to the
Center for even its salary bill,” Mufti
said. |
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Common
man relieved : Srinagar, Feb 18:
After suffering due to the three-day
strike of the government employees,
general public heaved a sigh of relief
Wednesday after employees entered into
an agreement with the government and
deferred the strike for a day.
Due to the employees’ agitation, general
public was put to inconvenience as
offices remained closed from Monday.
While the essential services worked
normally, other services especially
health were affected as hospitals faced
shortage of manpower. The patients and
their attendants were left in lurch due
to the stir as scores of major and minor
surgeries were cancelled.
“We had to go through worse suffering.
Our patient was scheduled to undergo a
surgery on Monday which was later
cancelled,” said Farooq Ahmad, an
attendant in the SMHS hospital. “We have
taken the date of the surgery many weeks
in advance. Now the strike has been
called off and we hope we won’t have to
suffer anymore,” he said.
Officials at the SKIMS said the OPD
services were affected for the past
three days. “Since the employees have
called off the strike, we are expecting
the things to be normal from Thursday,”
they said.
Heaps of garbage have piled up not only
in health centers but also on the roads
as the hospital and municipality
employees also stayed away from work.
The transport services provided by the
SRTC were also affected during the
strike. The Srinagar-Jammu and
Srinagar-Delhi bus service remained
suspended for three days which forced
the passengers to look for other modes
of transport. “The government bus
service is a cheap and convenient
service. The cancellation of the service
has put scores of passengers to
inconvenience,” said Ashiq Hussain, a
bank employee.
The commoners who visited the winter
secretariat here for redressing their
problems had to return disappointed
after seeing the offices locked. “We
intended to fix an appointment with the
minister in the winter secretariat and
inform him about our civic problems. But
there was none who could help us,” said
Ghulam Hassan of downtown Srinagar.
Earlier, employees took out a rally from
SMC premises Karan Nagar and marched to
city centre Lal Chowk. Separate rallies
were taken out from Raj Bagh, SRTC, and
Agriculture Complex Lal Mandi. The
rallies concluded at Press Colony where
EJAC leaders addressed the employees.
The employees dispersed off peacefully
when the news about the agreement came.
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NEWS /
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