Punjab Congress chief Navjot Singh Sidhu on Sunday joined a dharna outside Delhi Chief Minister Arvind Kejriwal’s residence. The development comes a little more than a week after the Aam Aadmi Party convenor attended a teacher’s protest against Chief Minister Charanjit Singh Channi and the Congress-led Punjab government.
“An ounce of performance is worth a pound of preachment, practice what you preach Arvind Kejriwal ji. Delhi school teachers say they are treated as bonded labour & daily wagers, paid per day, no payment for holidays or weekends, No guarantee of contract, removed without notice,” he tweeted sharing visuals from the agitation.
Speaking to the media after joining the protest in Mohali, Sidhu urged the AAP leader to “first solve the issues in your state” before travelling to Punjab. 22,000 guest teachers, he contended, were working as bonded labourers in the national capital. The PCC chief said that the AAP administration was “filing up vacant posts through guest lecturers” while the number of job vacancies for teachers in Delhi continued to increase. The guest teachers of the Delhi government are incidentally protesting the regularisation of their jobs.
In a series of tweets, Sidhu also accused the AAP government of not living up to their poll promises. “In your 2015 manifesto you promised 8 lakh new jobs and 20 new colleges in Delhi, where are the jobs and colleges? You have given only 440 Jobs in Delhi. On the contrary of your failed guarantees, the unemployment rate of Delhi has increased by almost 5 times in the last 5 years,” he wrote.
At the end of November this year, Kejriwal had joined a protest of contractual teachers in Punjab, assuring them that their issues would be addressed on an urgent basis if the party came to power. They had been pressing for several demands including regularization of services of contractual teachers. The Delhi Chief Minister had also promised to implement a transfer policy for teachers and assured them cashless medical treatment facilities if elected.
