Irregular disbursement of funds by the Sarva Siksha Abhiyan (SSA) is eating into the State exchequer in Jharkhand and causing delay in payment of honorarium to the 67,000 odd para teachers in the State, officials from the School Education and Literacy department said on Tuesday.
The para teachers appointed under the SSA programme of the Centre back in 2002, impart education to students in rural and semi-urban and rural areas of the State. Some of the schools, hardly a few kilometer from the State capital’s periphery are run by para teachers alone.
These teachers have not received their payments for the month of February, March and May this year.
State School Education and Literacy Secretary Amrendra Pratap Singh said that the SSA is yet to sanction its funding to Jharkhand for the current fiscal. “Last year, the SSA approved Rs 1,000 crore and disbursed only Rs 700 crore. We had to manage the remaining Rs 300 crore from the State exchequer,” Singh said.
He, however, added that the payment for the month of May is likely to be made to the para teachers by June 15 this year. The para teachers here get a monthly pay of Rs 9,438.
Meanwhile, due to elections this year, the Public Accounts Committee (PAC) is yet to be formed. The fund to be allocated to Jharkhand under SSA will be finalised only after PAC’s meeting, officials said.
“We have managed to pay the para teachers for the month of April. Their pay for that month has already been credited to their accounts,” Singh said.
While the para teachers have been up in arms against the alleged apathy of the government towards them since years, all of them were asked to go on poll duties during the recently concluded Lok Sabha polls in Jharkhand. The teachers were paid Rs 1,600 to Rs 2,000 for their poll duties, they said. The latest in a series of protests by these teachers was a strike from November 16, 2018 to January 17, 2019.
“We are somehow managing our expenses in absence of pay from the government. Even last year our payments were delayed,” said Sanjay Dubey, a para teacher at Hazaribag Basic School in Barhi block. Dubey, who also happens to be a member of the Jharkhand Ekakrit Para Sikshak Sangh, added that the many teachers were awaiting regularisation of services in order to get regular pay.
Department officials, however, said that the number of para teachers is likely to fall in the state following tests. The untrained para teachers will no longer serve their duties after the scrutiny later this year, they added.
The fall in the number of para teachers is likely to reduce the financial burden on the state and the SSA.