Expressing concern over rising coronavirus cases, Telugu Desam Party (TDP) MLC A.S. Ramakrishna on Thursday asked the State government to withdraw its decision to make biometric attendance for teachers of government schools a mandatory, to avoid any health risk to them.
The school education commission issued circular 145 dated June 23, 2020, for compulsory attendance of teachers which was in violation of the Central government guidelines. Moreover, even the Supreme Court has ordered for doing away with biometric attendance in offices considering its potential as a touch point to spread infections, he said addressing a press conference on Thursday.
Mr. Ramakrishna told the government that there were several instances where teachers faced serious problems due to virus infections. At Chennayapalem in Kavali rural mandal, a woman teacher attended school on June 23 and, when she returned home in the evening, her son and husband were found to have tested virus positive. Consequently, the villagers boycotted all teachers and told them not to come to school.
Advice to govt.
The MLC appealed to the government not to take hasty decisions and it may call for services of a few teachers to attend schools in order to upload data for the Unified District Information System for Education. This data also should have been completed six months ago in order to get the Niti Ayog funds from the Centre. Even if the biometric devices were sanitised regularly, it was not a correct time for the department to bring pressure on the teachers to come to schools at this dangerous time of infections. Any such step would endanger the lives of over 1.8 lakh teachers working in primary, upper primary and high schools at mandal and zilla parishad levels, he said.
In South Korea, schools were closed down again in view of unchecked virus cases. In India, schools were not reopened in Karnataka, Tamil Nadu, Puducherry, Chhattisgarh, Orissa and other States.
Chief Minister Y.S. Jagan Mohan Reddy himself said schools would be reopened only after August 3. The Union HRD Ministry has also said it would take a review on reopening of schools only after August 17, he added.
