Claiming that the State Government will neither close any school nor have vacant posts of teachers, Haryana Chief Minister Manohar Lal Khattar on Thursday said that the state government is in process of recruiting 11,000 teachers, of which 5000 PGTs will be recruited by HPSC and 6000 TGTs will be recruited by HSSC. Till permanent recruitment is made, possibilities are explored to fill these posts through Kaushal Rozgar Nigam, Khattar added.
Interacting with the reporters in Chandigarh, Khattar said that in the last eight years, 8,600 PGTs and TGTs have been recruited. Referring to the issue of PRT teachers which is sub-judicious in the Supreme Court, the Chief Minister said that the government stands with those teachers. All these teachers are well qualified and the government can even consider recruiting such teachers in the new recruitment process. These teachers had cleared the HTET exam after the posts were advertised, due to which their appointment was questioned, said Khattar.
The Chief Minister said that due to Covid-19 pandemic, the-teachers of online transfer of teachers was halted. During this many teachers retired and many got promoted. “Now, the state government has again started the transfer drive. When we started the online transfer process again this year, we found that there were 117 government secondary schools that had no teachers and more than 2,000 PGTs were employed in such high schools where classes IX and X had only one or two sections. Therefore it was decided to rationalize the teachers according to the workload,” he added.
Taking a dig at the Opposition for making noise over the merging of schools, the Chief Minister said that during the tenure of the previous government, 509 schools were merged, whereas during our tenure only 120 schools were merged. The Chief Minister said that after merging the number of senior secondary schools is 2304, high school is 1027, the middle is 2122, and primary is 4184. Unlike congress, we never left these merged schools unfunctional.
Khattar said that Cheerag Scheme implemented by the State Government is proving to be a boon for poor students who wish to study in a private school. Under this scheme, the government is giving Rs 700 to private schools for children studying in classes II to V, while an amount of Rs. 900 and Rs. 1100 will be paid for the students studying in classes VI to VIII and IX to XII respectively. This amount is being given per student per month. He said that under this scheme, so far around 381 private schools have given their consent to admit students on 24987 seats, of which around 2500 children have been already enrolled, informed Khattar.
‘One-time scheme for settlement of arrears of Passenger and Goods Tax’
Aimed at recovering the outstanding arrears of Passenger and Goods Tax amounting to Rs. 2113 crore due till March 31, 2017, Khattar announced a one-time scheme for settlement of arrears of Passenger and Goods Tax. Khattar said that the old 'Punjab Passenger and Goods Tax Act, 1952' has been abolished in this area. But tax, interest and penalty amounting to Rs. 2113 crore is due before the abolition of the said Act. Under the scheme formulated by the Transport Department, if the payment is made within a period of 90 days from the date of notification, then the beneficiary will have to pay the principal tax amount along with a lump sum settlement amount equal to 25 percent of the principal tax. The Chief Minister said that there are about 2,62,715 total vehicles whose total payable tax upto March 31, 2017 amounts to Rs. 778 crore, while the interest payable up to March 31, 2017, is Rs 761 crore. He further shared that from April 1, 2017 to March 31, 2021, the total calculated interest is Rs. 574 crores.
‘New roads in urban areas will be constructed on a 50:50 share basis’
Khattar announced that from now onwards, the construction of new roads in urban areas will be done on a 50:50 share basis between State Government and Urban Local Bodies. He said that the decision has been taken due to the problem of paucity of funds being faced by the ULBs. According to the demands of the people in the cities, roads having a cumulative length of 506 km would be constructed and repaired by the Urban Local Bodies Department, which would cost Rs 141 crore. Necessary directions have been given to the Urban Local Bodies Department to float the tenders for the proposed roads in the next 15 days, informed Khattar.