Nepal Teachers Union calls for allocating 25 per cent of national budget to education

Kathmandu, March 22 : Nepal Teachers Union (NTU) has demanded that 25 per cent of the national budget should be allocated to the education sector. Speaking at a press conference organised by the union’s new working committee here today, newly-elected president Rajendra Raj Poudel said that the Union has come up with this demand as the current budget allocated to the education sector was inadequate.
The new working committee was elected from the Union’s eighth federal convention held in Kathmandu from March 15 to 17. The general convention has put forth 23 demands related to issues in education and 19 demands related to professional issues.
Among the demands include establishing a Teachers’ Hospital for providing affordable treatment to the teachers, abrogating the eighth amendment to the Education Act as it has tried to restrict the trade union rights and adjusting the national postings of teachers by systematising the unequal allocation of the teachers’ posts.
Similarly, the Union has called for providing remote area and dress allowances to teachers working in the remote areas at a par with the civil servants, constituting a constitutional teachers service commission and a high-level education commission, fully implementing the declaration ‘schools as zone of peace’, the political appointments to be made in the education sector be done from among the teachers and the state should take the responsibility of compulsory and free education up to the secondary level.