Bhubaneswar, Aug 11: In order to get parity between government and block-grant schools, around 50,000 school teachers on Wednesday have announced to hold a demonstration on August 16.
Government has been giving false promises regarding fulfilling the minimum facilities demand of the State teachers over the years. Hence, demanding a solution to this matter, August 16 will be observed as ‘Swabhiman Divas’ and for this, 50,000 teachers will hit the road, Prakash Chandra Mohanty, Convenor, School Teacher’s Federation of Odisha (STFO) informed.
Though the qualification of aid-school teachers is equal to government school teachers, salary received by the aid-school teachers is one third of government school teachers, the teachers alleged. Also, facilities like employees’ provident fund, promotion, retirement benefit, medical facilities have not been provided to aided school teachers.
Pointing out about the salary structure, Mohanty said that the salary for a government teacher is Rs 58,000 and for an aided school teacher it is Rs. 13,500. Besides that, Salary to around 254 teachers has not been given for past several years. Scheme for promotional incentive like Revised Assured Career Progression (RACP) has not been entitled to any teachers, added Mohanty.
Aided school students are not getting enough facilities like science kit, laboratory, library, computers, sports equipment, and study tour as compared to government school students.
Till now, there are around 3,656 government run high schools, 1,265 fully aided high schools, and 3,826 block grant and aided schools operating in the State. After a student of block appears high school certificate examination four times consecutively, Block-grant schools are eventually taken up by the state government.
