KATHMANDU, July 13: The Nepal Institutional School Teachers´ Union (NISTU) shut down all private schools in Kathmandu Valley Monday, protesting against the arrest of six of its officials on Sunday. [break]
Police had arrested six Nepal ISTU officials, including its president Hom Kumar Thapa and general secretary Amal Rai, who were trying to stop school buses going to St Xavier´s School, Jawalakhel, to enforce an indefinite strike at the school.
Organizing a press conference Monday, Nepal ISTU said it would shut down all the schools in the Valley on Tuesday and continue with the indefinite strike at St Xavier´s, which has fired six teachers for, it claims, forming a union at the school.
However, guardians of children studying at the school have decided to defy the strike called by the teachers. "We will get our children to school at any cost and keep the school open," said Kumar Pandey, general secretary of the Guardians´ Council at the school, when contacted by myrepublica.com.
"The teachers have moved the labor court regarding the issue and the court will decide whether they have been dealt with unfairly. For our part we want the school to run smoothly," Pandey added.
St Xavier´s had fired the six teachers at the end of March—it reinstated one of them, Shashi Basnet, later—and fired another teacher, Sudhir Khanal, on June 25.
“We were fired for flimsy and unsubstantiated reasons like not doing our work, chewing pan parag, arguing, and snatching a mike,” says Binayak Chhetri, who added that he was suddenly laid off without prior notice on April 1, after nine years of service.
Chhetri—who is secretary of Nepal ISTU, St Xavier´s, Jawalakhel unit—says Father Lawrence Maniyar, head of the Jesuit Society in Nepal, fired the teachers for forming a union at the school, on September 29.
Father Lawrence could not be reached for comments but school principal at St Xavier´s Jawalakhel, Father Boniface Tigga maintains the teachers were not fired for forming a union. “I have been here for only three months and can´t comment on the expulsion of other teachers. But Sudhir Khanal was fired by the management committee after receiving the report of an inquiry officer, Nanda Thapa, who is academic vice-principal of the school,” Father Boniface said.
But Sudhir Khanal, president of the school unit of Nepal ISTU, claims that the inquiry was done after suspending him on April 1, which is against school regulations that require an inquiry before suspension.
“I was fired after the inquiry but they never sent the inquiry report to me as per the regulations,” maintains Khanal, who has worked for 33 years at the school including a stint at St Xavier´s School at Godavari.
Khanal also refutes the reasons given for his expulsion— students failing in his subject, and coming late, putting up notices and organizing meetings, things he claims to have done with prior permission from the principal, as well as collecting money from the teachers and snatching a mike, among other things.
“Only four out of 132 students in grades 4, 5 and 7 failed in my subject (Nepali). But 22 out of 40 students have failed in the subject (Chemistry) taught by inquiry officer Nanda Thapa,” Khanal claimed.
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