The non-teaching employees working in Kasturba Gandhi Balika Vidyalaya (KGBV) have demanded hike in salary and framing of job policy for their regularisation. The female employees working in these residential schools have asserted that they have been working without any break for past 12 years. The KGBV scheme was introduced by government of India in 2004 and later integrated with Sarva Shiksha Abhiyan (SSA), to provide elementary educational facilities to students from under privileged strata of the society.
There are 97 KGBV residential schools operating in J&K while two are yet to be made operational. “Apart from teachers, each KGBV has five non-teaching employees, working on contractual basis for past more than a decade. But our services have not been regularised,” said a group of female employees. These class-IV contractual employees are working as cook, peon and as other appointees. “We work 24 hours a day as KGBVs are residential schools and we have to remain present in the school,” they said. These appointees are given Rs 4000 per month. “In present times this amount is not sufficient to run families. We are all qualified and at time we volunteer to take classes in schools as well,” they said, urging the government to regularise their services.