Chairman of the School Education Regulatory and Monitoring Commission Justice Kantha Rao has responded favourably to a plea by MLCs belonging to the Progressive Democratic Front (PDF) to look into the financial woes of teachers working in private schools who have not been paid salaries since March.
In a memorandum to him on Tuesday, PDF MLCs K.S. Lakshman Rao, I. Venkateswara Rao and R. Suryarao said the teachers were in a financial distress on account of the coronavirus pandemic and the lockdown necessitated by it. They appealed to the commission chief to impress upon the government to solve the problems of the 1,20,000 teachers working in private schools across the State.
Mr. Kantha Rao said he would release orders in a couple of days asking private schools to pay the pending salaries to teaching staff.
Private Schools’ Association leader Ramanna, Student Federation of India leaders Prasanna Kumar and Koti and the Centre for Indian Trade Union’s Mahesh were also present.
Govt. teachers upset
Meanwhile, the government directive asking State teachers to visit their schools daily to complete works related to the Unified District Information System for Education (U-DISE), a data capture format that mandates collection of information from all recognised and unrecognised schools imparting formal education from classes 1 to XII, has not gone down well with the teaching fraternity.
In a statement, State president and general secretary of the United Teachers’ Federation (UTF) Shaikh Sabji and P. Babu Reddy said the government should reconsider its decision in view of the sharp rise in the COVID-19 cases. Instead, they said, as the information sought by the government was pending from only a few schools, their representatives could be asked to come and complete the unfinished tasks.
They said it was difficult, especially for women teachers from remote villages, to travel all the way to their schools as transport facility was not yet fully restored. While the Secretariat staff were asked to work from home, teachers were not being spared even in this pandemic times, they said.
They said since it was not possible to run schools, the government should think of an alternative like distribution of laptops or tabs to students to facilitate online classes.
