The
Shillong Times: Shillong: Sunday, August 23, 2015.
The JACATAM
has constituted an RTI group headed by Kular Khongjirem as the convener and R
Ronghang as the chairman to examine the possibilities of filing an RTI on the
deduction of cess for upliftment of the education sector in the state.
“We have
formed the RTI group to know the areas on which we can file an RTI to find out
about the cess deduction implemented by the State Government which is meant for
the betterment of the education sector,” JACATAM chairman ED Nongsiang told
newsmen after the general meeting of the association here on Saturday.
He said that
the other reason for finding out the deduction on cess is that they were told
by chief minister Dr Mukul Sangma in their last meeting on July 29, that the
Government has not been able to fulfill their demand on the proposed
provincialisation of the service of the teachers in the State since it does not
have the resources at the moment.
“The chief minister
assured us that the provincialisation of service of teachers will be done as
and when the funds are available with the Government,” the chairman said.
It may be
mentioned that the State Government had planned to utilise the funds collected
through the cess from cement in funding various social sectors like sports and
education. Also, the Government had decided to introduce a cess on clinker at
Rs 20 per metric tonne for the purpose of empowering the education sector.
When asked
about the status of their demand, Nongsiang said that the Government has
accepted the comparative study report submitted by the Directorate of School
Education and Literacy (DSEL) to the State Government on the provincialisation
of the service of teachers.
He said that
the directorate has given the details about the comparative studies where a
delegation from the Education department led by the director had gone to
various States like Kerala, Goa, Assam and Sikkim to conduct a comparative
study on the feasibility of this proposed exercise.
Giving out
some of the details of findings of the comparative study, Nongsiang said that
the Education delegation team has found that there are three categories of
schools in Kerala and Goa- Government, Provincialised and Self Financing Schools.
“In Kerala,
the State Government has provincia-lised all the schools which were set up
before 1991,” JACATAM chairman said.
Informing
about the findings of the Education team in Assam, he said that the Assam
Government had decided to provincialise all the schools in 2011, adding that
presently there are three categories of schools in Assam as well.
”After the
provincialisation of schools, now there are only about 10 percent of private run schools in Assam,”
Nongsiang said.
Meanwhile, he
said that the situation in Sikkim is a bit different since it is yet to have
its own board.“All the schools in Sikkim are affiliated either to the CBSE or
ICSE,” he said even as informing that the provincialisation of the services of
teachers is yet to take place in Sikkim.
JACATAM said
that they are happy as the findings of the comparative report of the DSEL
coincide with their demand to provincialise the services of the teachers.
“It now
depends on the political will of the Government to provincialise the service of
teachers,” Nongsiang said.
JACATAM
chairman said that the total expenditure on salaries will be around Rs 900 cr
annually.
“Presently,
the Government spends around Rs 500 crore on the salaries of the teachers. The
Government will incur an extra expenditure of another Rs 400 crore once it
provincialised the service of the teachers,” he said.
Nongsiang
said that currently, there are around 1200 schools in the State under deficit
pattern and the number of deficit and adhoc teachers in state totals to 37,000.
Meanwhile, he
informed that as a part of the proposed provincialisation, the Government has
managed to keep its commitment of releasing the salaries every month.
According to
him, the teachers used to receive the salaries once in three months. “We are
happy that we are receiving our salaries regularly,” JACATAM chairman
added.With the assurance on the part of the chief minister, he said that they
have decided to take part in this year’s ‘Teacher’s Day’ celebration organised
by the State Government.
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