Aided school teachers await pay

Avneet Kaur

Jalandhar, June 25

The secondary staff and teachers of aided schools have not received their salaries from February. Teachers of the primary school are waiting for their salaries since December. They say they have been demanding a merger of aided schools with government schools for the past ten years, but the government was not paying any heed to their demand. From a total of 1,200 employees in the schools, just 470 employees are left and many schools lie at the verge of closure.

Speaking about the delay in salaries, Manish Aggarwal, press secretary, Aided School Teachers and Employees Union, said the staff faced the problem of delay in salaries every year, especially at the end of the year. “After 2002, the condition of aided schools and the numbers of staff have degraded with every passing year. At times, it becomes difficult to manage our family expenses as we don’t receive salaries for months together,” he said.

He says one of the reasons for the delay in the release of salaries is that the budget is allotted late for aided schools. Moreover, there is no regular head in the schools and most of the times the work of the clerical desk or head is being done by teachers. Even the Har Gobind Khurana Scholarship is not given to students who secure 80 per cent and above while in government schools, it is being provided, he claimed.

Earlier, there used to be 59 aided schools in the district among which 53 were secondary and six were primary, but recently two secondary schools have been closed and now there are 57 aided schools in the city. Also, there was a time when the school gave many merit holders at district and state levels, but from the last many years, students’ performance have been going down due to the paucity of staff.

According to Arvind Bains, president, Aided School Teachers and Employees Union, the demand of the merging up of the schools with government schools had been made to the Badal Government and now, the same demand was being made to the Congress government. The sick condition of the schools and lack of staff have brought the schools to a verge of closure. Moreover, the jobs of the staff have not been secured in the aided schools and hence the merger would provide job security to the staff and would also increase the standard of education for students.