SHILLONG: Chief Minister Conrad K Sangma said on Wednesday the state government was facing an uphill task to mobilise additional fund for paying SSA teachers’ salary after the Centre reduced fund for the same.
The chief minister’s statement on Teachers’ Day comes in the wake of protests by SSA teachers who are going without salary for months now.
Informing that the state government would need an additional amount of over Rs 100 crore since the Centre has decided to cap the salary in the current year, Sangma said the state government has fixed two slabs for SSA teachers’ salary.
“The first category of teachers is getting Rs 19,000 a month and the second category Rs 15,000. There are states which are paying Rs 28,000 and even Rs 30,000 to SSA teachers,” Sangma said.
The Centre has decided to cap the amount at Rs 15,000, “which means the remaining amount has to be borne by states” and most of the states “are not happy with the decision”.
“We need to carry out a lot of exercise with the Finance Department and Revenue generating departments to mobilise the additional fund for payment of the salaries of the teachers,” he said.
SSA teachers in the state decided to shun celebrations on Wednesday and organise a sit-in demonstration at the Additional Secretariat parking lot.
“In the past four months, the state government has been negotiating and discussing with the Centre for the benefit of the SSA teachers in the State. But we had to finally agreed to few of the terms and conditions that had been laid down by the Government since there were a lot of pressure from teacher to release their salaries,” the chief minister said and added that there would be “a huge impact on state budget”.
There are about 13,000 SSA teachers in the state.
A Garo organisation has also written to the chief minister requesting equal pay to SSA 4th teachers for equal work.
“It is learnt that the state government is not giving equal pay, despite the work being same; there is no parity of pay between the assistant teachers (central government sponsored) and the 4th teachers (state sponsored). The assistant teachers draw a sum of Rs 20,493 per month whereas state government sponsored 4th teachers are getting only Rs 12,000,” said Maxbirth Gabil Momin, general secretary of the A’chik Youth Council.
NEHUTA protest
Teachers from the North-Eastern Hill University wore black badges on the Teachers’ Day expressing their solidarity with and support to the Federation of Central University Teachers’ Associations that is protesting against the inaction of the government to scrap the New Pension Scheme to teachers and other central government employees. The teachers are demanding reinstatement of the old scheme of General Provident Fund.
