Bhopal teachers cry 'forced labour'

Bhopal teachers have alleged they are being forced to participate in a United Nations project. They said they will protest against the augmentation project on water conservation, jointly launched by the United Nations Human Settlements Programme (UN-Habitat) and Coca Cola (India) Inc, if they are not paid for the 'extra work' and 'expenses.'

The UN-Habitat had sanctioned a project titled 'Capacity Building for Values-based Water, Sanitation and Hygiene Education in Schools,' under its 'Water for Asian Cities Programme'.

Also known as 'Project Uday', it is aimed at introducing education on water, sanitation and hygiene, based on human values, in four cities of Madhya Pradesh: Bhopal, Indore, Gwalior and Jabalpur.

The project was implemented through the Centre for Environment Education while the new augmentation project will be implemented through the State Lake Conservation Authority.

"Although we encourage the aim of the project, we had a very bad experience with the project. There should be some contingency fund with the school to meet petty expenses. There should also be provisions for honourarium. In the next meeting, we are going to protest against the new project launched in association with Coca Cola in our school if we are not paid for the extra work. Already, more than Rs 10,000 have not been paid during the last two years. Our teachers had to shell out the money even as there was a corpus of Rs 4 crore," the principal of Hamidia School said.