Sri Lanka teachers' union urges the President to rectify errors in distribution of new teacher appointments

A teachers' union of Sri Lanka says the recent teacher appointments violate fair distribution and affect the standards of education in rural and remote areas.

The Ceylon Teachers' Union urges President Mahinda Rajapaksa who is to hand over the appointments today to mediate to rectify the serious errors committed by education authorities for narrow political gains.

The General Secretary of Ceylon Teachers' Union Joseph Stalin Fernando said that around 3,500 teacher appointments to be granted at the Temple Trees this afternoon will create a number of problems in the education sector aggravating the pressure among teachers.

He points out that the Minister of Education has changed the normal practice of giving the first appointments of the teachers graduated from the National Colleges of Education to difficult areas and they have been given appointments in their residential districts. This will hinder the opportunities for the teachers of the previous batches who went to difficult areas to get transfers to their residential districts after fulfilling their service in difficult areas due to shortage of vacancies.

He said that more than 900 teachers have been appointed to national schools although there are only few vacancies and the teachers aspiring to transfer to national schools from Provincial Council schools will have no vacancies.

Meanwhile, the Ministry of Education itself points out that there are around 50 excess teachers in some national schools idling at the cost of public expense.

Meanwhile an education official of the Mathugama zone in Western Province said that only a few teachers have been given to the zone although there are around 60 vacancies for English teachers alone. Education sources say that the majority of the teachers appointed to Western Province go to Gampaha and Kalutara districts despite only few vacancies exist there.

The Union General Secretary says that the Education Ministry and the Provincial Council education authorities need to reconsider the distribution of teachers in relation to the literacy rates and education facilities of the districts.