Excess teachers burdening coffers

14 June 2011 01:35 am

By Rifthi Ali

There are 3,118 excess teachers in the Eastern Province, causing an additional expenditure of 45.64 million per month for the provincial coffers, Eastern Province Education Director M.T. Nizam said yesterday.

He told the Daily Mirror that around 2,443 Tamil medium teachers and 675 Sinhala medium teachers were in excess of the approved cadre in the province.
However, he said the Eastern province had 1,702 Tamil Medium and 321 Sinhala medium teachers vacancies for various subjects.

He added that teachers had to be appointed for various subjects such as second language (Tamil, Sinhala, English) Maths and also library teachers.  
Mr. Nizam noted that 400 Tamil medium excess teachers and 56 Sinhala medium excess teachers are to be utilized to teach the subjects after being given training for which teachers are scarce.

A Teacher transfer scheme in the Eastern Province is implemented to distribute teachers more evenly. 564 Tamil medium teachers and 110 Sinhala medium teachers have been transferred out of the zone effective from 26th, he said. This controversial teacher transfer scheme had been objected to by Eastern

Provincial council members including Chief Minister Sivanesathurai Chandrakanthan. Several protests were also organized in the province against this
scheme.  However, this scheme was later implemented with the support of the board of ministers of the province and the province’s Governor, Rear Admiral Mohan Wijewickrama.

Meanwhile, 1,862 Tamil medium teachers and 508 Sinhala medium teachers had already been transferred under the inter-zone transfer scheme last week, he added.