Post News Network
Bhubaneswar, August 18: Around 500 block grant school teachers, already on strike since August 11, gathered Tuesday at Lower PMG to press for their demands such as making their salaries at par with what government teachers get.
The protesters said their demonstration will continue till the Assembly session is over, and said the protest would intensify with 40,000 colleagues across the state set to join them soon. Earlier, the teachers took out a mass rally from the city railway station to Lower PMG.
“I’ve been teaching for 25 years at a grant-in-aid school in Cuttack and my salary is only `13,000. My counterparts in government schools earn around `45,000. I’m here to tell the government that we deserve better than what we are being doled out,” said Sheikh Jahuruddin (55), a teacher from Cuttack.
Prashant Mohapatra, general secretary of the Block Grant School Teachers’ Union, demanded that the grant-in-aid system be abolished and a salary-linked system be implemented in its place.
The protesters demanded that around 2,210 grant-in-schools should be brought into the government fold. “The provision of DA and increments in our salary should be brought in as per the Condition Rule 1974 and 1977,” Mohapatra added.
Another of their demands was that benefits of SSA and RMSA be given to students of grant schools as well. Filling up vacancies of 1,576 posts in teaching and non-teaching categories at grant schools, and uniformity in payment of salary of Class IV employees were among the other demands.
