When a person opts for an employment, his main motive behind the job is to earn the salary from his service, in order to run his household. There is no question of job without salary. And imagine if this happens with teachers, the nation builders. A section of teachers working in Jammu and Kashmir under the state based scheme of Rehbar-e-Taleem, who are being irregularly paid their salaries from a centrally sponsored scheme “Sarva Shiksha Abiyan”, have to move from pillar to post for their monthly wages. They are paid every three or four months that too after a lot of struggle.
It has become a routine for them that every time they need their hard earned wages, they have to protest on roads. When government is compelled by protesting teachers, they manage to release a single month’s salary from the state coffers on loan basis till the centre releases the funds and they recoup back the funds accordingly.
This irregularity in the release of their salaries is only due to the reason, that their salaries are being paid, insufficiently with long delays, by government from the funds released through a centrally sponsored scheme of MHRD despite the fact that the teachers enrolled under this scheme are state government employees.
These teachers have been engaged and then regularised after rendering five years satisfactory service to the department of education on a meager remuneration of Rupees fifteen hundred which is then enhanced to Rupees three thousand during their initial five years of service. The scheme which confirms the Rehbar-Taleem teachers as general line teachers after their regularization according to its guidelines and norms set by state government.
Actually they fall under Rehbar-Taleem scheme but are paid from Sarva Shiksha Abiyan, hence are being crushed under the pressure of two different schemes of state and centre respectively. Government says, ” we will pay them salaries, once we get funds released from centre “, but they forget that these teachers belong to state and state has to absorb them under state posts.
Secondly the salary from centre is not released at par with the requirement of state, the salary from centre is released on consolidated manner but Rehbar-e-Taleem teachers have been regularised as general line teachers “regular teachers” as per the guidelines of the Rehbar-e-Taleem scheme, hence need for more funds to cope up with the salary requirement. So there always remains a shortfall of funds released by centre for salary component.
Recently in a letter written and dispatched by State Project Director SSA to DSEK and DSEJ, he mentioned that SPD has no funds meant for arrears of already regularized Rehbar-e-Taleem teachers and no salary for newly regularized Rehbar-e-Taleem teachers. “There is a difference between unit cost and the salary being paid to regularized RETs which needs to be borne by state. There is also no provision under SSA to clear the arrears which also need to be borne by state, necessary steps in this regard be taken accordingly,” reads the forth para of the letter.
Now it is clear from the letter of state project director that MHRD is not releasing sufficient funds for the salary of these teachers, which need to be paid from state sources.
Government had already a number of times announced that the salaries of teachers working under SSA would be delinked from its source of funding. Even ex-finance minister Dr Haseeb Drabu claimed in previous budget session that government was going to get the salaries of all centrally sponsored schemes delinked from source of funding and claimed to pay them from the state budget. But govt has yet to act upon its own assurance.
The teachers are still protesting on roads, instead of teaching in schools, which is a misfortune for the future generation.
These teachers count about more than forty thousand teachers and are mostly posted in primary and uper-primary schools. They contribute about 60% teaching faculty in elementary schools. So it is clear that if they will frequently choose to hit the streets in order to protest for their legitimate demand of salary, the smooth functioning of these schools is impossible. Moreover they are mostly working in the schools of far-flung hilly areas, to provide access of education to the children of downtrodden families, where no other teacher is ready to go.
As of now these teachers have pendency of several months salaries and arrears but neither the state nor the centre is releasing the required funds for that. These teachers are living miserable days of their life , without the money required , for daily expenses , for returning the money to their debtors , for paying their loan installments, for paying school fees of their children, for purchasing necessary medicines to their ailing members of families and so on.
Looking from humanistic point of view, these teachers can’t teach properly, when their minds are already stressful for hardships faced by them to run their families, because teaching is a process which needs stable state of mind for a teacher.
Government needs to take this issue under its serious consideration and should pay them their salaries from state budget on monthly basis , so that the boat of elementary education may not capsize, and more than forty thousand families may not suffer any more.
Azad Hussain
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