Bhubaneswar, Sept. 5: Union minister of state for petroleum and natural gas Dharmendra Pradhan today took to social media to slam the state government on the "teacher-on-call" issue.

Seizing the opportunity on the occasion of Teacher's Day, he criticised the state government's move to appoint retired teachers for temporarily filling up vacancies in schools. The minister said the state government had been using the contract teachers as Uber an Ola vehicles.

"Although the state government and other ruling party leaders have criticised me for calling teachers as Uber and Ola, I prefer to stick to my statement," he wrote.

"A total of 1,07,752 teachers engaged in primary schools are working on contractual basis. As many as 13,377 posts of high school teachers are lying vacant," he tweeted.

There are no high schools in 38 gram panchayats in the state, while 376 schools do not have their own buildings. Further, out of 53,252 schools, 42,070 - about 80 per cent of the lot - have no playground. While each school should have at least one class room for each class, 41,670 do not have that, he pointed out.

"Instead of appointing thousands of unemployed BEd candidates to the vacant posts, the state government has preferred to appoint retired teachers," Pradhan wrote.

BJD leaders said the state government was only following the HRD ministry's "teachers-on-call" scheme. "Let him first read the central guidelines on 'teacher-on-call' and then make statements," said BJD spokesperson Surya Narayan Patro.

School and mass education minister Debi Prasad Mishra said: "The state government has taken steps to fill up teacher posts and let the Union minister refrain from badi pala (baseless argument)."