The education students, however, boycotted exams at the exam center at Sahid Shukra Secondary School in Kathmandu. At about half a dozen other centers, examinees´ attempts to walk out of the exam halls were foiled by police. According to Anil Rijal, President of Free Students´ Union (FSU) at Mahendra Ratna Campus, Tahachal, police forcibly made the students sit through the exams at various centers in the capital. [break]
“Police pressed all students trying to walk out back into the exam halls,” Rijal said. “The start of exams was delayed by almost an hour at various centers.” Rijal, who is leading the exam boycott accusing TSC of not properly probing fake documents submitted by students with no education-subject background, warned of stronger protests.
“We will go ourselves to all the centers on Sunday to disrupt the exams,” he told myrepublica.com. TSC is conducting the last phase of the exams on Sunday. For its part, TSC has vowed to hold the last exams at any cost. The license exams, earlier slated for January 22-24, were rescheduled for March 5-7 following violent demonstrations by education students.
Education students have been demanding that TSC thoroughly probe the matter of fake documents submitted by non-education students. They fear that others may take away all the teaching jobs if TSC fails to prevent them from obtaining licenses through the use of fake documents.
In what it calls a chance for students deprived of teaching jobs during the decade-long Maoist insurgency, TSC had announced that all those involved in the teaching profession from before 21 November, 2006--the date of signing of the Comprehensive Peace Agreement (CPA) between the government and Maoists--would be entitled to vie for the licenses.
Against the backdrop of this announcement by TSC, it is believed that thousands of students with no education-subject background have applied for the license exams with fake work experience documents. Earlier, TSC had formed committees in all 75 districts to look into the fake documents, following vehement criticism by education students.
Of the total 197,000 applicants, TSC has found that the documents of over 3,000 students from across the country were fake. “We scrapped their applications right away,” Ashok Aryal, Joint-Secretary at TSC, said. “We have done our best to address the education students´ concerns.”
But education students say that TSC´s investigation is not convincing. “TSC has formed probe committees just for the sake of accommodating our demands,” Rijal said. “Barring a few districts, there has been no actual investigation. The probe committees would have exposed a thousand more fake applicants had they investigated properly and thoroughly.”
Meanwhile, in a clear act of dousing the anger of education students, TSC has said that it would take ´the utmost action´ against those who manage to obtain licenses by producing fake documents even if they manage to land teaching jobs. “We can even fire them from their jobs,” Aryal said. “They will never be able to feel secure. What more can we do than that?”
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