More than 150 qualified teachers approached for their recruitment in a CBSE-affiliated English medium school in Anand district have refused to take up a job in Gujarat.

The reason: They feel that Gujarat is not safe. This is despite the fact no major incident of violence has occurred in the state in the last 10 years. But the memories of 2002 riots widely shown on TVs have prevented them from working in Gujarat.

The trustees of the Hanifa School at Napa, near Anand town, were surprised by the response. Hanifa School run by Mumbai-based Ayesha Haji Abdul Latif Chritable Trust, is among the few private schools in the state that gives sixth pay commission salary to its staff, apart from free accommodation, medical allowance and free lunch on working days.

The trust had approached more than 150 candidates through job websites in Delhi, Aligarh, Lucknow, Kolkata, Chennai and Kozhikode. The trustees physically went to Kozhikode and interviewed as many as 35 candidates in the first week of this month. But all of them rejected the offer when they came to know that the school is located in Gujarat.

The school with a total of strength of 600 students from Std I to X is currently having 35 teachers. It wanted to recruit 12 more teachers for science, mathematics, social sciences, economics and accounts subjects.

The decision to recruit teachers from outside the state was taken as good English medium school teachers are not available in the state. Another strategy behind recruitment from outside was that the teachers not familiar with the local language will interact with students in English only and this will improve the students' standard of spoken English.

Zubair Gopalani, one of the trustees, when questioned, said that 99 per cent of more than 150 teachers approached through emails as also through personal interactions refused to take up the job because of institute's location in Gujarat. Among those turning down the offer included Hindu teachers as well.

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