After the Punjab government deployed hundreds of government school teachers to make new ration cards in several districts, teachers submitted memorandums addressed to Chief Minister Bhagwant Mann and Deputy Commissioners in their respective districts, stating that if the non-academic duties were not abolished within a week, they would boycott it completely.The Samooh Adhyaapak Jathebandiyan, an umbrella of teachers’ unions, drafted the joint memorandum.Teachers said there was widespread resentment over non-academic assignments, specifically the ration card verification work.A large number of teachers from several unions protested outside the Patiala DC office on Tuesday and raised slogans against the Punjab government and the district administration for issuing such orders.Read | Promised jobs in Spain, sent to Thailand. Then came ‘Khan Baba’ callAccording to information, over 300 teachers from Patiala and over 1,000 from Ludhiana have so far been deployed on the ration card duty.The protest was called off only after the Patiala district administration scheduled a meeting of the protesting teachers with the Deputy Commissioner at 1:30 pm.Vikram Dev, state president of the Democratic Teachers Front, said that the teachers demanded that the district administration should completely scrap non-academic duties disrupting students’ education — such as ration card verification, health cards, stubble burning management, and the handling of various types of official correspondence— assigned to them.Story continues below this adThey informed the DC that the Patiala SDM office issued letters on September 14, assigning an additional 337 teachers to the duty of verifying ration cards. A large number of teachers were assigned duties for this task from specific schools: 62 teachers from Government Senior Secondary School (Civil Lines), 54 from Multipurpose School, 37 each from Model Town School and School of Eminence (Pheelkhana), 23 from PM SHRI School (Tripuri), and 16 each from New Power House Colony School and Old Police Line School.Additionally, a significant number of teachers from Government High Schools in Patiala Cantt, Anardana Chowk, Sanauri Gate and various other government schools in the city have been summoned to work on the rectification of ration cards during the examination period, they said.“The Punjab government, which ascended to power on the slogan of ‘bringing health and education revolution’ — contrary to its election guarantees — is actively undermining the public education system. Teachers are being increasingly burdened with non-academic tasks and duties — often more so than under previous administrations—leaving them occupied with everything except teaching, a situation that is causing the quality of education for the children of the common people to plummet to even lower levels,” said the teachers in a statement.Furthermore, the leaders pointed out that while teachers are already engaged in non-academic duties such as the population census, Special Intensive Revision (SIR), drug surveys, and the creation of health cards, the Punjab government, despite trumpeting an ‘education revolution’, has now ordered the remaining teachers to undertake yet another non-academic task — the verification of ration cards.Story continues below this ad“These duties are being assigned precisely when mid-term examinations are underway in schools. We strongly condemn the move and demand the withdrawal of these assigned duties. If these assignments are not revoked, we will refuse to perform them as part of a boycott of non-academic tasks,” the teachers warned.