Minister in-charge Education Rakkam A Sangma on Friday informed that the Centre has released the second installment for payment of salaries to the SSA teachers in the state.
“Up to date salary will be released very soon,” Sangma said while replying to a call attention raised by UDP legislator from Nongpoh Mayralborn Syiem in the Assembly.
He said that the state government is striving towards providing quality education at all levels despite challenges in various educational parameters.
“The state government is taking a holistic approach to address the concerns of the multi-faceted categories of teachers in the state. To implicate that the state is doing less and clueless about the concerns of teachers is unfair and partial statement,” Sangma stated.
The minister also said that state government is aware of the series of demands such as, budget provision in the state budget, salary structure and enhancement of salary, merging of SSA teachers from SEMAM to education department, constitution of education commission, filling up of vacant SSA posts, DBT for salary and regularization of SSA teachers.
He said in 2021-22, the actual releases by Government of India is Rs 305.84 crore and the state would contribute Rs 30.19 crore.
Consequently, the central government releases Rs 271.71 crore and the state matching share of Rs 30.19 crore.
The shortfall in the expenditure was met by the state government through its Corpus Fund and eventually almost 90% of the expenditure is on salary alone.
In addition, he said the actual releases by Government of India during 2022-23 is Rs 372.36 crore as its share and the state would contribute Rs 41.37 crore as its state share matching the central share as per the existing fund sharing pattern of Samagra Shiksha.
“As on February 2023, the central share received by the state is Rs 272.34 crore and the state share is RS 30.26 crore. The state has also released the additional grant, Corpus fund amounts to Rs 104.62 crore besides the mandatory 10% state share which amounts to Rs 30.19 crore as on February 2023,” he informed.
The SSA programme was launched by the Government of India in 2001-02 for universalization of elementary education in the country.
It is a time bound programme and the future of the scheme solely depends on the continuity of the programme which is the policy decision of the Government of India.
The minister said the state government is appraising the above inference and its complexities, since the demands require in-depth assessment especially on the financial implication of salary enhancement and merging of SSA teachers to education department as well as regularization of service of SSA teachers by the state government.
“I may informed the August House, that the school managing committee of all the SSA schools are the appointing authority and not the state government and the recruitment of SSA teachers’ is executed by the school managing committee, therefore, the recruitment policy of the state government does not permit the regularization if contractual teacher,” he said while adding that the contract of service is signed between the managing committee and the teachers of SSA schools in the state before joining their service.
Furthermore, the proposal to end the problems of SSA teachers in terms of salary solely depends on the funds/sanction given by the Central government.
Stating that the government is proposing to take these matters from a wider perspective to address the problems of teachers of all categories, Sangma said the state government has approved the Meghalaya State Education Policy on September 20, 2018 and has addressed teacher policy sufficiently and recommends that the teacher recruitment will be based purely on merit and only qualified and competent teachers will be appointed as per the extant regulations.
The state government will create conditions along constructive and creative lines to help motivate and inspire teachers. The teacher’s pay, service conditions and retirement benefits should be commensurate with their social and professional responsibilities.
The appointment of teachers in government and government aided schools shall be made on the basis of MTET at elementary level. For government secondary and higher secondary level, appointments will be made through MPSC.
A cadre of principals, heads of schools will be created to ensure effective school leadership.
A rigorous selection process will be put in place to fill school head/principal vacancies.