January 21 will be more of a day of protest than celebrations of Meghalaya’s 50 years of statehood as SSA teachers became the latest group to hold a demonstration on that day.
Ad hoc teachers, at least one pressure group and even a sitting MLA, Adelbert Nongrum, have already announced their protests.
Today, the Meghalaya SSA Schools Association (MSSASA) announced that it will hold a black flag sit-in and candlelight vigil to protest the failure of the state government for not paying their salaries for the last three months.
Addressing the media, MSSASA president Aristotle Rymbai said that, taking into consideration the Covid-19 situation, only 10 SSA association members will take part in the black flag sit-in demonstration that will be held from 12 noon to 1pm at Khyndailad. The candlelight vigil will follow from 5:30pm at the same venue.
He informed that, based on a right to information (RTI) request, the Centre released Rs 59.34 crore on November 9 and Rs 73.51 crore on December 22 to Meghalaya for the SSA scheme but that Education Minister Lahkmen Rymbui said that only Rs 52 crore had been sanctioned.
“We are very surprised that the statement made by Rymbui does not match the response we got through the RTI from the Ministry of Education,” Rymbai said.
Rymbai also said that the proposal sent by Meghalaya for uniform grant of Rs 600 per student was accepted but a grant of only Rs 300 was implemented.
Furthermore, the composite school grant Meghalaya had sent a proposal for was based on enrolment and received approval but the implementation order was for Rs 10,000 for all SSA schools in the state not as per the enrolment but as per the approval of the project approval board.
The SSA teachers will also continue with their ‘non-cooperation’ movement and boycott all government-related non-teaching duties, such as those related to Covid prevention, cleaning drives, etc until their salaries are paid.
Meanwhile MSSASA also announced that it is preparing to file a case in the High Court concerning the regularization of the SSA teachers.
“The stand of the government is that it is not the responsibility of the state to regularize the service of the SSA teachers but the RTI reply from the Ministry of Education says otherwise,” Rymbai said.
