Teachers not joining duties for verification of Smart Ration Cards have been served notices warning them of strict action by the district administrations in Ludhiana, Amritsar and Barnala, besides certain other places in the state.The recipients, meanwhile, expressed confusion because top Education Department officials maintained that the District Education Officers (DEOs) had been asked to excuse teachers from the duty. Democratic Teachers Front president Vikram Dev Singh said, “The DEOs asking teachers not to go for verification duty had no meaning till the message came from the state government. A formal order withdrawing the earlier duty letters needs to be issued by the office of the Chief Secretary”.Teachers had taken up the issue of difficulty in carrying out the verification drive, with their district administrations concerned at several places. In Patiala, representatives met the Deputy Commissioner and submitted the list of prior tasks at hand that made taking on another duty difficult. No notices were issued after the meeting.Talking to The Tribune, a senior Education Department official said, “Teachers are overworked. The DEOs have been asked to pursue the matter with district administration officials to get the verification of ration cards done by other departments.”Notices have been issued to as many as 314 teachers for missing a September 11 special training session in Ludhiana district alone. Teachers posted at Tapa, Bhadaur, Talwandi, Bhotna, Tinkone Bhadaur and Badra in Barnala district have also received the letters.The notice from the Tapa SDM office sent to 11 teachers read, “You had been assigned the task of verification by the department on September 4 but to date have not received a single verification report. Strict action will be initiated against you in case you do not show any work by September 17.” However, no work has arrived to date.Teachers argued that they had at their hands full with additional duties, especially during this time of the year. The list of additional work included: Special Intensive Revision, Census, Drug Census, anti-stubble burning, local body elections, Khedan Watan Punjab Diyan, health cards and flood-related attention duties.Education Minister Harjot Singh Bains had last month informed the Assembly that the state had a vacancy of 31,370 teachers, amounting to roughly one-fourth of the total sanctioned strength. He had also written to the Chief Secretary to pass instructions to the departments concerned to permanently exempt teachers from non-teaching duties.