6,000 teachers sans salary for 3 months

Amit Khajuria

Tribune News Service

Jammu, November 7

Though the Central Government has announced bonanza for employees of the newly formed Union Territory (UT) of Jammu and Kashmir, but thousands of General Line Teachers (GLT)of district Jammu, who were recruited under the New Pension Scheme (NPS) are without salary since August when Article 370 was scrapped and erstwhile state was bifurcated.

There are about 6,000 General Line Teachers in the Education department of the district, who are waiting for their salaries for the past four months.

“The government has announced more perks for the employees of Jammu and Kashmir, but we didn’t even get our fixed salary for the last four months. The department has paid the salary for July in October, but still three month salary in pending,” said a General Line Teacher posted at Dansal village.

“It has become so difficult for us to survive, as these months were of festive season and our Diwali was quite depressive this time,” she added.

The NPS teachers are those who were recruited after 2010. All other teachers are getting their salaries on time.

“This is for the first time the salary of the General Line Teachers was stopped. We took up this matter with the higher authorities, but nothing was given accept assurances,” said Ganesh Khajuria, State Chairman, Jammu Kashmir Teacher Forum. “The authorities say that they have not got the grants from the secretariat. About six thousand teachers are waiting for the grants,” he added. Surprisingly, the Chief Education Officer (CEO), Jammu, was unaware of the issue.

“There is no such problem in Jammu. Everyone is getting timely salary, except some teacher who are engaged under the Sarva Sikha Abhiyan (SSA),” said Kulbir Singh, CEO, Jammu.