Corona has increased the financial strains of the Government, but commitments made by it too have a value. It’s not acceptable to ignore the most genuine demands of a section of employees under one plea or the other, and this time owing to the corona crisis.
The victims of such long continuing apathy of the State Government are the Block Grant teachers who are being repeatedly harassed on the ground of financial austerity.
The corona pandemic has further dimmed their hope of regularisation of service and implementation of salary as per the 7th Pay Commission recommendations in their favour.
While the State Government employees have been getting higher scale of pay under the 7th Pay Commission since 2016, these teachers getting full GIA in shape of Block Grant as per the GIA policies 2017 and 2018 are still languishing with underpayment and denial of service conditions.
Adding to their woes, the Government is still sitting over a proposal for these benefits even as scores of these teachers and non-teaching staff in the Block Grant institutions have retired without pension and other related benefits.
“This is a vicious cycle we are hardly having any chance to get rid of when the way the Government is brazenly violating provisions of all previous GIA Policies and even the GIA Policies of 2017 and 2018, where it has been clearly mentioned that the employees would be entitled to all financial benefits at par with the regular Government employees,” stated a teacher of a Block Grant High School in Baleswar district. Yet another teacher of Dhenkanal district questioned, “Who will we rely on in this Government when the words of the Chief Minister are not respected by the bureaucracy?”
The CM in 2017 had announced that the Block Grant system was abolished from then State and Grant-in-Aid (GIA) policy was re-implemented in its place.
This had created hope among about 30,000 employees working in Block Grant schools and colleges of getting regular scale of pay and service conditions.
However, the bureaucracy while drafting the GIA orders of 2017 and 2018 did not leave any scope of regularisation of the posts leading to emergence of yet another policy as horrendous as the Block Grant— Grant-in-Aid in shape of Block Grant, he added.
The Government has been promising us to fulfil the demands for service conditions and 7th Pay scale but there is no results. There have been repeated negotiations with the Higher Education and Mass Education Ministers and also with the Secretaries of the two departments.
But the proposals are discarded by the Finance Department. Consequently, thousands of teachers are passing through uncertainty and mental strains, especially those who are nearing their retirements, said a teacher leader.
An educationist opined, “What was the motto behind providing Block Grant to these privately built educational institutions and then raising the scale of pay from time to time? Surely, the Government wanted to create a healthy atmosphere in schools and colleges. But by repeatedly ignoring the teaching community or rather losing its credibility before them, Government seems to have failed in its motto.”