A participant being greeted before the workshop was called off on Friday. (Chinlop Fudong Lepcha)

Kalimpong, March 12: The Janmukti Secondary Teachers’ Organisation today forced the West Bengal Board of Secondary Education to cut short a workshop for heads of hill institutions.

The JSTO sent a message to the board last night, asking it to wind up the four-day workshop organised by its Sarva Siksha Abhiyan cell for headmasters on “extended module for quality management and quality education”. It was being held at Disha Bhawan here since Wednesday.

“The holding of the workshop at a time when we are fighting for our just demands is absolutely meaningless and even ironic given the fact that almost half of the attending delegates are not full-fledged heads of institutions,” said Tshering Tamang, chief coordinator of the Gorkha Janmukti Morcha’s education monitoring cell (EMC).

R.P. Tamang, a member of the board and the workshop coordinator, said only 56 of the 129 heads of institutions who attended the workshop were full-fledged headmasters. The majority participants were teachers in-charge. “I decided to wind up the workshop today on receiving the JSTO letter. I, too, support its non-cooperation movement, even though the students from the hills, I fear, will receive less marks if their papers are evaluated in the plains because of many factors, including language barrier,” he said.

Converting all teachers in-charge of the hill schools to full-fledged headmasters is one of the demands of the JSTO.

The EMC coordinator said they would like the board to constitute a one-time panel to recommend candidates for the existing vacancies after scrutinising their qualifications.

“The usual excuse given by the government for the huge backlog of vacancies in the hill schools, most of which are government-aided, is the absence of the School Service Commission in the DGHC area. But how does that explain the vacancies in government-owned institutions like the Darjeeling Government High School, Kalimpong Government High School and Sardaswari High School in Darjeeling where the recruitment is carried out by the state Public Service Commission,” asked Tshering Tamang of the EMC. The total number of vacancies in the three government schools is 37.

Debashish Dutta, the board’s regional officer, said over the phone from Siliguri that he had briefed his higher-ups on the situation. “I have sent my report to our headquarters. It is for them to take action to solve the problem,” he added.