Muktsar: While environmentalists were observing the Earth Day today, a group of teachers held a corner meeting here and expressed concern over the future of environmental education in Punjab, with only 59 geography lecturers left in the plus II level schools run by the Punjab School Education Board (PSEB).

Pointing out that there were only 162 posts of lecturer of geography across the existing 10,590 senior secondary schools in the state, the Geography Post-Graduate Teachers Union, Punjab, has expressed concern that 103 of these 162 posts are vacant.

Submitting a memorandum to Chief Minister Parkash Singh Badal and state's education minister Upinderjit Kaur in this regard, on the occasion of Earth Day today, the teachers' body demanded not only filling of posts of geography teacher, but also increase in the number of geography teachers on a par with lecturers of history, political science and economics, the three other subjects for students of humanities.

The memorandum was handed over by the teachers body delegation to Faridkot ADC Mohan Lal. They regretted that no new post of a geography lecturer had been created from 1986 to 2005, as a result of which the subject was ignored on a large scale.

In 2006, the Education Department created 1,764 new posts of lecturer, allocating only 87 posts for teaching geography, notwithstanding a 2004 survey revealing a demand of geography subject at the plus II-level in at least 400 more schools, union president Sukhminder Singh Sukhi told The Tribune.

The geography teachers’ body had been pressing the government to regulate the recruitment system as per the demand of the subjects for five years but in vain, he added.