The city which houses the major centres of power in India – from the Parliament to the Supreme Court, to the Delhi Legislative Assembly, to the biggest media houses in our country – has left its teachers in the lurch for over six months now. I’ve spent my life teaching children from deprived families in government-run schools. But after working for six months without a salary, I don’t know how much more I can give anymore to my students. My students might be happy, but I feel like I’m failing my family.

We, the teachers of Municipal Corporation of Delhi (MCD) schools, have raised our voice on every possible platform, from social media to protest marches at Rajghat to the Delhi High Court. But our government’s apathy towards its selfless servants just saddens me. 

We spent the better part of the last two years, amid the Covid pandemic, going above and beyond our call of duty. When we weren’t teaching online classes, we were distributing food to the needy, performing administrative tasks in hospitals and dispensaries and counting the dead in mortuaries. Today, our human rights are being sacrificed at the altar of a political slugfest. We see no empathy in our leaders’ responses to our plight. What we witness instead is an endless cycle of accusations and counter-accusations. Political parties continue to bicker but no one steps up to accept responsibility for the mess that’s been created by the powers that be. 

There are over thousands of us, teaching students in MCD schools, waiting on our salaries and pensions since December 2021. Some of us are struggling to pay rent. We are teachers but are struggling to pay our children’s school fees. 

We request your support for this petition. Help us get to 20,000 signatures so that the authorities are able to see the plight of its teachers and prioritise urgent redressal of our grievances. 

Help me and thousands of other teachers get their pending salaries and pensions due since December 2021.