100 per cent salary hike for teachers

By Our Reporter

SHILLONG, MAY 2: The Meghalaya cabinet today approved the 100 per cent salary enhancement for over 7000 teachers working in government-aided schools with retrospective effect from January 1, 2017.

Addressing newsmen after the meeting, chief minister Mukul Sangma said, “We have approved the proposal of the Directorate of School Education and Literacy (DSEL) for enhancement of the grant-in-aid to the school managing committees (SMCs) to increase the salaries of the different categories of teachers by 100%.”

He said the different categories of teachers include a total of 2450 lower primary teachers, 2532 upper primary teachers, 1521 4^th teachers in SSA schools and 844 Hindi teachers.

“This will be effective from January 1, 2017,” Sangma said while informing that a total amount of around Rs 63.34 crore will be required for implementing the proposed enhanced grant-in-aid necessary for increasing the teachers’ salary.

Earlier, the state government had only enhanced the salary of the secondary and higher secondary adhoc school teachers.

It may also be mentioned here, the state had also witnessed number of agitations by teachers’ fraternity under the different banners demanding for salary hike.

According to the chief minister, today’s decision was a culmination of the assurance made in the just concluded Budget session of the State Assembly held in March earlier this year.

Stating that the exercise was despite the challenges of availability of funds, Sangma said, “This was in view that the state government wants to ensure that the salary is good enough for the teachers as a mark of acknowledging their hard work.”

Further, the chief minister has also asked the various school managing committees (SMCs) to ensure that the grant-in-aid is exclusively utilized for the salary expenditure.