Assam: Primary school teachers on strike over payscale

GUWAHATI, June 7, 2018: Assam's primary school teachers on Wednesday put on black badges inside classrooms to protest against state government's misleading revision of their payscale.

The protest was called by the All Assam Lower Primary Teachers' Association just after finance minister Himanta Biswa Sarma announced on Tuesday to accept the recommendations of the Pay Anomaly Committee formed last year.

"It is for the first time a government has decided to decrease salary of an employee. With recommendations of the committee, the state government has created differences between a teacher of middle English and that of a primary school though both are equal in terms of educational qualifications. Any higher secondary-passed person is eligible to apply for both categories of teachers' posts," general secretary of the association Ratul Chandra Goswami told this correspondent.

Goswami said according to the recommendations of the committee, the state government has announced to pay Rs 8,700 as grade pay for teachers of middle English schools and Rs 7,400 as grade pay for primary schoolteachers.

Earlier, according to the Seventh Pay Commission recommendations, both categories of teachers got Rs 8,700 as grade pay from April to September of 2017 after which the committee was formed.

"We will never accept such discrimination. The anomaly committee did not recommend anything about post of the head teacher of a primary school. If there is nothing special for a head teacher, why did the government use all head teachers for various work?" Goswami asked.

The committee was constituted by the state government under the chairmanship of retired government official P.K. Dutta to consider the grievances of the employees and to examine anomalies in the recommendation of Seventh Assam Pay and Productivity Pay Commission.

The committee had submitted its report in December last year.

Goswami said, "The pay commission is an independent body and the committee is one of its parts. However, it cannot slash our pay scale."

Source: The Telegraph

Featured image: Representation