The State Assembly’s Monsoon Session may face teachers’ fury as the ones getting Block Grant are gearing up to stage protests against the Government apathy. Similarly, the non-Government aided lecturers on State scale have also threatened cease work from August 1, protesting lack of promotion for long years.
The college and school teachers getting Block Grant have already held meetings and warned of agitation at a heightened scale. They have resented the Government’s lackadaisical approach to reform the education sector and procrastination over switching over to Grant-In-Aid (GIA) from the Block Grant.
The 662 Block Grant college teachers and employees’ association has decided to hold strike from the very beginning of the Monsoon Session and shut all its colleges. “It is unfortunate that the Government is yet to finalise on paying GIA to the Block Grant teachers though this has been the one and only demand of the association for long years.
The employees under the Block Grant have already passed two-third of their service period. Many are nearing retirement age. Still, their service is not regularised,” rued a teacher leader, adding that the agitation from would be a decisive one.
The 488 Block Grant teachers are also a frustrated lot. Expressing their agony, scores of them protested vehemently the failure of the State Government to take a final call on regularizing their services even after being in power for the back-to-back four terms. They lamented that the grant policy of the Government bears malice against the teachers as it has weakened their organization by splitting them into various groups. A teacher disclosed that in a full-aided college, a lecturer gets less than a peon in the same institution because of the Block Grant policy.
The State scale teachers also protested deprivation of promotional avenues for long 27 years. They said the State Government has far discriminated the Government college teachers against their counterparts in the fully aided colleges in terms of awarding them promotion. They said despite fulfilling all norms for promotion, the State scale lecturers are not entitled to the same.
Meanwhile, the high school teachers under Block Grant also spewed venom against the Government for having taken them for a ride. Many teachers and employees in high schools said the Government was repeatedly breaking promises of converting Block Grant to GIA.