New Delhi: The Municipal Corporation of Delhi (MCD) schools, after failing to provide uniforms to a whopping nine lakh students has set yet another benchmark for itself. The civic agency is facing faculty crunch for its schools, as it is unable to meet the shortage of teachers and principals.

The civic agency, despite of getting an allocated budget to the education department every year has been unable to ensure basic facilities in these schools.

The education department has been allocated 22.79% of the budget in 2010-2011, amounting to Rs.1441.76 crore of the total budget.

Prithviraj Sawhney, chairman of education committee of the MCD announced that, "We are ought to face a shortage of 4500 teachers by next year for all our classes. To address the problem, around 1700 teachers will be promoted to Delhi government schools."

He further added that, "The rest are contractual teachers who have to be phased out. 100contractual nursery teachers out of the 200 employed by us will no longer fit into the criteria of recruitment due to their over age."

He also noted that the Delhi government needs to refresh its recruitment rules, which it had not done for six years.

"It is due to this delay that the nursery teachers on contract cannot be made regular employees," he said.

Facing the shortage of teachers, the civic agency has further claimed that the Delhi government has reduced the age limit for hiring teachers.

At present, although the MCD has 22000 teachers on its payroll but it is currently facing the crunch mainly in the sports and the arts department.

"Due to the acute shortage we had to promote around 25% of the teachers on the ad hoc basis to the level of a principal," he acknowledged.

"The staff selection board has been intimated about the shortage but we are yet to be provided with the regular employees. There's also an acute shortage of 200 Urdu teachers."

Despite of the promises made by the MCD to ensure proper buildings for all schools, out of 1746 schools, still many continue to function under tents.