Odisha teachers protest govt threat of jail to absentee evaluators

Odisha Sun Times Bureau
Bhubaneswar, Apr 8:

The association of Odisha’s 662 colleges have objected strongly to the government’s threat to impose hefty fines and even send them to jail if they fail to turn up for the evaluation of answer sheets.

“The lecturers have evaluated papers with utmost sincerity in the previous years. Last year, some senior officials leaked the question papers and disrupted the examination process. While more than a thousand lecturers were engaged in the evaluation process, all of them were blamed for the unwanted mistakes of 336 of them who remained absent, which is regrettable,” said President of the association Golak Nayak in a press release.

“The lecturers are being forced to go for e-evaluation this year without proper training. They are also being threatened with fine and jail terms in case of a mistake, which is unfair. The authorities have not yet been able to provide air-conditioning for the evaluators as committed. A healthy and favourable atmosphere needs to be created to ensure fearless and error-free evaluation of the papers,” he added.

The authorities need to do the needful for the evaluators instead of frightening them, opined Secretary of the association Gagan Beura, Satapuddin Ahmed, Tapan Jena, Kalyan Panda, Ranjan Pradhan etc.