The Government continues to be insensitive to the rot afflicting education system in the State vis-à-vis Block Grant.
It looks the Government has neither the genuine concern nor the guts to face the precarious situation prevailing in the Government-run schools and colleges, especially the ones spread over the rural and tribal belts.
The fact is the Government is after hype of it success which it seeks to make by spreading falsehood. Every time there is an election, it makes high-sounding announcements of different schemes, but on ground, they all appear to be sheer fuss.
Block Grant is one of the most crucial problems in the education sector of the State. Thousands of teachers are underpaid and uncertain about their service career. They have lost all interest in work and are always busy in organising agitation, closing their schools and colleges. As a result, it is lakhs of poor village students who remain at the receiving end.
The standoff over Blok Grant is hardly going to be resolved after the new salary scheme announced by the Government recently. It was like the snake never killed and the stick never broken! The Block Grant teachers had demanded implementation of Grant-in-Aid (GIA) and had boycotted answer scripts evaluation works this year. After a hectic move to make alternative arrangement, the Government with much constipation agreed for GIA. And, several months after, what the Government did was the Block Grant salary was hiked by 25 per cent with a provision of 3 per cent annual increment and new salary was declared as GIA.
Teachers of all hues had protested against Block Grant as the salary in this mode was four times less than the actual and there were no facilities applicable to regular Government employees. So, what the long agitating teachers were demanding was regularization of service with all facilities and pay as applicable to posts under regular mode.
The new salary is no way different from the Block Grant, except for the lone benefit of annual increment. The DA, HR, pension and other benefits are missing. Most importantly, the 25 per cent hike will hardly reach the salary of a lecturer who has already spent a third of his service career at Rs 20,000 and by the retirement time, it would hardly reach the slab of Rs30,000.
As before, the new salary would keep the Odisha lecturers at the lowest pay in the country and would not inspire the new generation to take to teaching as a profession.
Though the 662 college teachers’ association has hailed the new salary, the 488-brand college teachers are still disappointed. There is simmering discontent among the largest section of teachers with the new salary handed out by the Government, which will neither keep the teachers content nor restore normalcy in the system, opined many intellectuals.