'We Will Either Score Full Marks Or We Will Get a Zero'

Nepal Verified News caught up with Laxmi Kishor Suvedi, central president of the Nepal Teachers’ Federation, which has been leading a protest of teachers and non-teaching staff of community schools across the country as part of its years-long effort to make the government address its “one-point demand”. 

Excerpts from the interview:

What is the status of talks between the NTF and the government? 
Formal talks with the government have not yet begun. We recently met government ministers (Minister for Finance Bishnu Paudel, Minister for Education and Sports Bidhya Bhattarai and MInister for Home Affairs Ramesh Lekhak) to explain them about our minimum preconditions for formal talks with the government. 
The ministers have segregated topics from previous agreements on which the Cabinet can make a decision. During our meeting with the ministers, we sought the Cabinet’s clarity on the time-frame for making decisions and the process governing it.

The Parliament is convening on April 25. But teachers and non-teaching staff are not quite upbeat in the absence of a clear timeline for introducing the School Education Bill by incorporating our concerns. So, our movement is very much on.

Isn’t your organization talking about the incorporation of demands mentioned in the six-point agreement reached with the then government on September 22, 2023?

That was not the only agreement we reached with the government. We reached separate deals with the government in 2075 BS (six years ago) and 2078 BS (three years ago).

There are two kinds of topics in these agreements. Some topics (demands) need laws whereas other demands require Cabinet decisions. 
The government says it will “try its best” to address our demands. This is quite ambiguous. The government needs to come up with a clear time-frame and a clear plan on addressing our demands through the Cabinet and tabling of the Bill in the Parliament through incorporation of other concerns needing legal remedies.

Since the Cabinet has not even done its minimum to address our concerns, we are not expecting much from it. We are continuing with our movement. We will either return scoring 100 out of 100 or we will return with a zero.

Your movement is likely to affect the new academic session and hit lakhs of students. Still, you are adamant?

An academic session runs throughout a year. Academic activities take place all round the year. 
Start of an academic session, quarterly exams, half-yearly and yearly exams, festivals and winter, there’s always something happening, right? Regardless of when you start a movement, a protest, there always will be some impact. But our reading is that this is the time when a movement will have the least impact on teaching-learning activities.

Isn’t NTF ready for some give and take? You cannot have it all, right?

We have but a one-point demand: The passage of a progressive Education Bill that is friendly toward schools, students, teachers and non-teaching staff, as stipulated in agreements reached with the government in the past.  

Either we score 100 out of 100 or we  get zero. There’s no give and take in this.