Srinagar: Despite the passage of more than a decade, the School Education Department (SED) has failed to regularise the services of in-charge Zonal Education Officers (ZEOs), headmasters and other employees, leaving them high and dry.
The regularisation of services of in-service, retired officers is awaited as the department has failed to hold the Departmental Promotion Committee (DPC) meeting to confirm the in-charge officers. Surprisingly, the officers awaiting confirmation of services have already passed away in recent years.
The J&K School Education Officers (retired and in-service) Association (SEOA) has expressed its displeasure over delaying conduct of the meeting of the Departmental Promotion Committee (DPC) which has halted the confirmation of the services of in-charge officers.
“The Department is repeatedly asking to submit the already submitted documents. We have authentic proof and receipt of our documents submitted to the department,” said Chief Patron JKSEOA, Abdul Qayoom Wani.
“The department has made the process time consuming which has badly affected the financial position of officials besides putting them in mental trauma,” he said.
He said the SED has delayed regularisation of over 8000 in-charge Gazetted officers including ZEOs and headmasters out of which around 3000 officers have already attained their superannuation while 900 have expired without confirmation or regularization of their services.
“Hundreds of such officers are likely to retire in the near future in their own pay scale and grade,” he said.
Notably, the regularization of in-charge headmasters has been pending since 2011 while the ZEOs and Principals have been awaiting their regularisation since 2008 and 2006.
“The government issued various orders for backlog and fresh in respect of each in-charge gazetted cadre without referring to JKPSC/ DPC for one time exemption of the officers for regularization but no regularization of such officers has been made so far,” Wani said.
Notably, the SED earlier initiated the process for regularisation of officers in 2017, 2018, 2020 and 2021 but the process was shelved as no Departmental Promotion Committee (DPC) were held till date.
The delegation of J&K SEOA has already submitted a representation to J&K Lieutenant Governor Manoj Sinha and put forth their demand for regularization.
“Ironically, the Gazetted cadre has not been regularized so far despite instructions issued from the J&K LG’s office,” Wani said.
Qayoom Wani said they were earlier assured by the department that the issue will be resolved by November ending this year.
“But December is also over and nothing has been done so far,” he said.
The SEOA Chief Patron threatened to hit streets to press for their demand if their issue was not resolved by January 20.
“Regularisation of services is not any demand but our right and we will hit the streets and stage protests against the department for denying us our right,” he said.
Principal Secretary SED, Alok Kumar when contacted said the documentation is concerned people are being done and DPC will be held once the documentation process gets completed. “People are on the job and it will be done,” he said.