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Tribune News Service
Jalandhar, June 22
Despite a series of protests and meetings, above 10,000 RMSA/SSA teachers in the state are without salaries for the last seven months and are waiting for the education department to release their hard earned money.
The teachers are also going to hold a state-level protest on July 16 in Patiala in this regard. "We have held demonstrations and strikes but of no use. What else can we do to get our hard earned money," said a teacher.
Gurpreet Singh, a teacher and active member of the RMSA/SSA union, said the last time they had got their salaries was in the month of November. "Such is the condition that we have to call for strikes to seek the attention of the department," rued Singh. It is not for the first time that the salaries of the teachers have been withheld, but it has now become a routine as earlier also, the Sarva Shiksha Abhiyan (SSA)/ Rashtriya Madhyamik Shiksha Abhiyan (RMSA) teaching and non-teaching staff had complained of not getting salaries.
The teachers had also gone on hunger strike to demand the release of salaries. Notably, the union had also announced the boycott of the SAD-BJP government before the elections and they said that they were eyeing the new government.
Some of the teachers had even pasted a notice outside their homes so that no candidate from both the parties should come to seek votes. The teachers who are on contract basis had also termed the announcement by the government to regularise the services of 27,000 employees as a political gimmick in the election season.
"But even the newly formed Congress government has failed to take up the matter," lamented the teachers. "We have raised our demand many times but they have not been taken notice of. How are we supposed to run our families, neither are they giving us our salaries nor are they making us permanent employees," the members said.
The teachers said that their counterparts in Gurdaspur had even met Education Minister Aruna Chaudhary but to no avail.
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