Nepal Educational Republican Forum (NERF) has announced phase-wise protest programme starting Monday demanding implementation of the agreement reached with the government regarding the service benefits for teachers.

As part of the protest, hundreds of teachers associated with the Maoist-led NERF organised sit-in demonstrations in front of District Education Offices (DEOs) in many parts of the country to generate pressure on the government to keep its promise.

Forum’s chairman Gunaraj Lohani said they were left with no option but to go ahead with their phase-wise protest programme as the government is yet to fulfill its commitment to provide appointment letters to private school teachers; give permanent status to all government teachers after completing certain procedure and so on as per the agreement signed between them last year. NERF has also been calling for scrapping of the Education Act which it says has become obsolete.

NERF has also announced that it will close down all the schools across the country from February 6 to 8.

NERF has been organising agitation in the education sector for a long time. The new phase of protest comes a month after the Education Service Commission (ESC) began procedure of internal promotion of some 109,000 permanent schools teachers.

Enraged with the government for turning a deaf ear to their demand of implementing the agreement, NERF together with All Nepal National Teachers’ Organisations (ANNTO) have shut down schools across the country for weeks, affected studies with their “chalk down” protest, picketed District Education Offices (DEO) across the country and also imposed traffic strike including valley bandh in the past.

The agitation of various other teachers’ organisations led by NERF reached its peak in May month last year when strikes called by it forced 35,000 schools across the country to close down affecting over 7.8 million students. nepalnews.com ag Feb 04 08