Shillong, Dec 20: Meghalaya SSA Schools Association has decided to launch non-cooperation movement against the state government from December 21
The association said the protest will end only when the government pays the pending dues.
In a statement issued on Monday, the association president, Aristotle Rymbai expressed unhappiness over the silence and adamant attitude of the state government to it’s demand of releasing Rs 104 crore.
This is the additional amount to be spent by the state government on capping norms of ‘Samagra Shiksha’ as part of 10 percent state share regarding financial support for payment of SSA teachers’ salary.
The amount has not been released for the last three years and if it was released,this would have been sufficient to pay our pending salaries for atleast 3 months, Rymbai said.
“SSA teachers have been without salary for almost five months and no immediate solution seems visible till date. Everybody knows that nobody goes into teaching profession to get rich, but teachers don’t expect to be suffered and penalised for their chosen profession. It is not only an issue of 12541 SSA teachers but also a question of survival of thousands of people that comprise our family members suffering for no reason”, Rymbai said.
What pained the SSA teachers is that the education department releases salary only for one or two months after a gap of four to five months.
“This salary goes to debtors like banks, leaving us (SSA teachers) without a penny. The SSA teachers are on the verge of starvation and no one is paying heed to our grievances”, he said.
“Because there is no response either from state government or officials of the education department till today, the last day of our ultimatum, the state government forces us (SSA teachers) to launch the non-cooperation movement which will start from 21st December, 2021”, he said.
According to Rymbai, during non-cooperation movement, no SSA teacher will attend to activities asked by the state government to perform in school be it Swatch Bharat activity, Azadi Ka Amrit Mahatosav programme, all awareness programmes, tree plantations and others, SSA teachers will not attend any other activities of government be it election duty including BLO’s duty, Covid-19 awareness duty and other activities not linked to education.
Rymbai said SSA teachers are suffering as they have to pay for the admission and school fees of their children besides spending much during Christmas.
“This has put us into depression and if this continues for another one to two months, it will turn into a humanitarian crisis,”he added
“Moreover, about 95 per cent of SSA teachers has no other source of income than the salary. However, unfortunately, it seems the state government considers that SSA teachers have other means of income and this puts us into further trouble because no one believes that we (SSA teachers) are living in a miserable life in the absence of timely payment. The truth is that our financial position is extremely bad and it is a challenge to manage and maintain our daily requirements and families’ livelihood”, he said.
