Bhubaneswar: Agitating block grant teachers started staging protests at panchayat level across the state from Monday.
As part of their three-day protest, teachers will organise motorcycle rallies and padyatras (foot marches) in villages of all panchayats across the state.
Thousands of teachers under the banner Odisha School College Teachers and Employees' United Forum have been on a cease work agitation since September 7. They also observed Teachers' Day on September 5 as a black day to demand fulfilment of their demands.
"We want to make the students, their parents and intellectuals aware about the government's apathy towards the teachers' community," said forum convenor Golak Nayak.
Earlier, the teachers had taken their protest to the block level. The teachers have been staging a protest since August 16 to press for a charter demands, including implementation of Seventh Pay Commission recommendations and the new grant-in-aid system that the state government introduced last October.
The cease work agitation has hampered academic activities in more than 6,500 schools and colleges across the state with the students expression about how their syllabus would be completed.
"My child goes to the school and comes back without attending any classes. It has become a major concern now and the students are wasting so much time like this," said Suchismita Jena, mother of a government college student in Khurda.
After the ongoing teachers' strike and repeatedly stalled proceedings during the monsoon session of the Assembly, Speaker Pradip Amat asked the government to hold talks with the teachers and resolve their issues.
Following the Speaker's direction, an inter-ministerial committee meeting was held with the teachers under the chairmanship of finance minister Sashi Bhusan Behera.
However, as the meeting failed to yield results, the teachers decided to intensify their agitation. "We will work something out shortly. We are also looking for alternatives to ensure that academics is not hampered by the strike," said school and mass education minister Badri Narayan Patra.
