Secondary school teachers call hunger strike again

Additional Class Teachers, a section of secondary school teachers who were recruited contractually under a project at government schools, yesterday again threatened to go for an indefinite hunger strike if the government does not make their jobs permanent immediately.

They made the call at a daylong sit-in, held under the banner of Bangladesh Additional Class Teacher (ACT) Association in front of Jatiya Press Club in Dhaka. Several hundred ACTs from various schools across the country took part in the programme carrying banners and posters.

“We want a permanent solution to regularise our jobs by any means, as the government gave us assurance to do so several times before,” Koushik Chandra Barman, president of the association, said at the demonstration.

“If our demand is not met, we will go for an indefinite hunger strike from tomorrow [today]. We will remain rigid to our decision even if the administration tries to stop us,” he added.

The government in 2015 recruited a total of 5,200 teachers as ACTs for three years, under a World Bank-funded project to improve math, science and English skills of secondary school students. The project ended in December 2017 and their payments were halted, but some 4,500 of them continued teaching following assurance from government that their jobs would become permanent.

On October 22 last year, the ACTs staged a sit-in demonstration, when they announced an indefinite hunger strike, which was foiled by police the next day.

The government last year assured that it would recruit the teachers under another project, but it neither regularised the jobs nor conducted the recruitment, said Mahi Uddin, joint secretary of the association.