The NTU, an umbrella organization of teachers, has time and again exerted pressure on the government to provide deceased teachers´ families with compensation on par with civil servants and security personnel killed during conflict.
“The deceased teachers´ families can never be compensated by money in real terms,” Krishna Dhakal, president of union, maintained. “However, we have long been asking the government to provide cash compensation to the victims so that they can earn their livelihoods.”
The union, on behalf of teachers´ associations, has struck deals at least twice with the government for compensation. But, the deals never materialized. “Our main demand for compensation has also been neglected, let alone other demands like free education and jobs,” Dhakal added.
Worse still, widows of deceased teachers have been facing difficulties in withdrawing money from their husbands´ provident funds. “Almost everyday, several widows visit our office with complaints of delay in extracting cash,” Mohan Gyawali, president of Nepal Teachers´ Association, said.
The delay in constituting district-level verification committees appear central to the plight of deceased teachers´ widows. Despite agreement in this regard, formations of such committees have not taken place. Such committees are necessary for verification of killings in some cases.
“The local administration has not confirmed the killings of many teachers,” Gyawali said, adding, “In such cases, yet-to-be-formed verification committees need to ascertain that those killings were caused by the conflict itself.”
Mostly, the widows of the teachers affiliated to the Maoists fare worse. Gunaraj Lohani, president, All Nepal Teachers Organization, claimed that that none of the Maoist-affiliated teachers´ families have got cash from the fund.
According to a government official, the Maoist-affiliated teachers´ families were denied their rights to compensation and provident fund mainly because they were directly involved in the armed insurgency. “They had abandoned their duties to join forces with the Maoists,” he says.
Lohani begs to differ. “It is not true that all of the Maoists-affiliated teachers picked up guns,” he argued. “The government can not keep them in same category.” He claimed that Balkrishna Poudyal, principal of Siddhi Binayak Secondary School in Chitwan, was detained and killed by the security forces while teaching his students.
“Poudyal was dragged out of classroom,” Lohani said. “No one recalls injustice done to him while criticizing the Maoists for killing Muktinath Adhikari.” According to him, neither has his family been compensated nor has his wife been allowed to obtain money from the provident fund.
However, some of the victims if not actual compensation have received relief cash. “Relief cash that the deceased teachers´ families got range from Rs 50,000 to Rs 100,000 whereas civil servants and security personnel´s families got far more,” Baburam Adhikari, president of Nepal Teachers´ Organization, claimed.
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