Suspended ethnic language teachers yet to receive response over reinstatement petition

By DMG 21 Aug 2022

DMG Newsroom
21 August 2022, Kyauktaw

A petition by nine teacher assistants seeking reinstatement to the jobs that they were suspended from in Kyauktaw Township, Arakan State, has not changed anything for them more than two months after they submitted it for consideration.

The petition was submitted to the offices of the township education officer, the state education officer and the Department of Culture on June 9, and the petitioners have not received any response so far, said Daw Aye Kyawt, one of the teacher assistants.

Nine teacher assistants are currently taking shelter at four displacement camps in Kyauktaw Township. They did not have to work when schools opened for the current academic year, so they submitted an appeal to the relevant departments a few days after schools opened to be allowed to work.

According to the instructions of the township education officer, the nine teachers were temporarily allowed to work on June 14, but they were stopped from working again on July 29.

“We considered ourselves as government-appointed education staff. We were fired without any failure on our part, so we have difficulties. I want the government to reconsider re-employing us,” said U Kyaw Naing Tun, one of the petitioners.

The nine were appointed as ethnic language teachers by the Ministry of Education on September 9, 2019, for eight schools in Kyauktaw Township.

The nine teachers closed their schools and fled to displacement camps as homes were destroyed when the Myanmar military clashed with the Arakan Army near the villages where they were assigned.

Daw Nyo Nyo Thein said that after they submitted an appeal letter to the relevant departments while taking refuge in displacement camps, they were told to stop working as teacher assistants in some schools starting on January 14, 2021, at the instruction of the township education officer.

“Officials from the township education officer’s office told us that we have to work in the schools we were originally assigned to,” she said. “They told us that we would be re-employed after the original schools opened. Now, we are living in IDP camps and are facing many difficulties.”

The nine teachers have not yet received their daily-wage staff salaries of K130,000 per month for June and July, according to the teachers.

U Ba Htwee Sein, the Arakan State education officer, told DMG that it was not clear whether the nine teachers would be re-appointed.

“They are ethnic language teachers, so they cannot be relocated in principle, even though they have appealed to be reinstated. If they are already employed in a village, they must work in that village. They have to quit because their positions cannot be transferred to another village,” he said.