The untimely death of a teacher in Jalna while on a hunger strike in June has prompted the Maharashtra State Unaided Schools Action Committee to offer help to the deceased teachers’ family by building
The untimely death of a teacher in Jalna while on a hunger strike in June has prompted the Maharashtra State Unaided Schools Action Committee to offer help to the deceased teachers’ family by building a home for them on the land sanctioned by the village chief. Education minister Vinod Tawde also said that a member of the teacher’s family would be offered a full or part time government job as well.
Speaking about the decision to help the family of Gajanan Kharat who died of a heart attack on the tenth day of a hunger strike called by the committee in June, Prashant Redij, Mumbai region chairman of the committee said, “The committee feels that as the teacher died while participating in a protest organised by it the least the committee can do is build a home for the teachers’ dependants.”
The committee had called for agitations all over the state demanding that the government give grants to unaided schools as they did not have funds and teachers had been working without pay for many years.
He however added that the committee had to bend backwards to get the chief of the village to allocate land for the teacher’s family. “The committee asked the village chief to allot atleast two guntha (land measure) which was allotted after some hesitance. Now we are awaiting the payment of salaries that the government has promised,” said Mr Redij adding that the committee has asked all the teachers to contribute atleast '1,000 towards the construction of the house.
Mr Tawde while announcing that salaries of teachers of unaided schools would be released soon, said that the death of Kharat was indeed unfortunate and the government would try to accommodate a member of his family in a full-time or part-time government job. Kharat is survived by his wife, daughter and mother and the daughter is still studying. As Kharat did not have a house of his own the teachers decided to help out.
The committee will be starting an account in the name of Kharat’s wife and will deposit all contributions from teachers in it.
