Class-lV employees: elephant in the room

At educational institutions, the staff is divided into two broader categories: teaching and non-teaching. The non-teaching staff include cleaners, gardeners, watchmen, office attendants, watermen, security guards, lab attendants and clerical workers. In the administrative jargon, they are grouped under the head Class-lV employees. The successful stewardship of an educational institution hinges upon pedagogical and non-pedagogical duties. The latter are related to Class-lV employees, which are actually co-pedagogical because they augment the pedagogical. Yet they are not discussed, as being considered the peripheral part of an educational ecosystem.

Ask any principal of a public college or school and you would come to know that the people who are to discharge non-pedagogical duties are the most incorrigible human part of an educational institution. The efficiency of a management, however, is gauged by how it makes these employees do their jobs. The former are sometimes threatened by the latter because if the latter pull back, the educational infrastructure doesn't remain a pedagogical space in any sense.

The people who helm the affairs in schools and colleges always remain in the nerve-wracking fear of the local and provincial administrators' visits to their institutions. All these visiting officials hold the management wholly solely accountable for any remissness. They don't cut them any slack. The management, too, does not reveal its powerlessness, lest it should be adjudged incapacitated for the management portfolios. This is the weakness the Class-lV employees capitalise on.

Now, the simplest question arises: why these employees don't obey their immediate bosses. First, the boss hasn't been empowered enough by the system that he could hold these employees accountable for any lapse in duty. Second, if ever any boss dares defy the nuisance power of these employees, he is barred by political interference, as most of the employees are recruited on the recommendations of the local MNAs and MPAs. In rural areas, these employees often spend their duty hours at the deras of the local political figures. Also, the more the management turnovers are, the more the opportunities are for the Class-lV employees to dodge the new management in their duties and financial hanky-pankies

The Class-IV employees can go rogue any time they are forced to pay their due duties. Imagine the state of infrastructural cleanliness if the lone cleaner at a school takes two consecutive leaves of absence. The classrooms would become dirty; the washrooms would remain filthy and clogged; the whole school would look like a dumping place of solid waste. Imagine what if the cleaner goes on a longer leave. The duties of a teacher on leave can be adjusted among the other teachers. So his absence doesn't prove as damaging and disturbing as that of a cleaner. Not all schools have the luxury of even a single cleaner, leave alone the provision of more than one. Hence, his irreplaceable position lends him a nuisance value.

The Class-lV employees, sometimes, knowingly evade or botch the duties because their duties don't remain specific to their designation. The horses-for-courses rule is violated when a lab attendant is forced to additionally work as a gardener because of a shortage of staff or immensity of work. He will shirk his duties, fearing being victimised on injustice. To get the neglected duties done, other employees are roped in. In this way, the boundaries between their respective duties blur and overlap. The result is utter chaos. When the number of employees falls short of the areas of duties, the institution becomes sooner or later an untended garden. Also, the more the management turnovers are, the more the opportunities are there for the Class-lV employees to dodge the new management in their duties.

The worst part is that the provincial governments are abolishing the vacant posts of Class-lV employees. Recently, the Punjab Government has abolished the seats of school security guards and the other seats, like those of lab assistants and library in-charges, wherever they were lying vacant. The abolition increases the workload on the remaining employees, disturbing the balance of duties.