The state cabinet today constituted the Meghalaya State Education Commission (MSEC) to advise the government on matters relating to schools and colleges, an issue that has caused a fair amount of distress, especially in terms of salaries, of late.
The four-member commission, comprising one chairperson, two advisors and one secretary, will give advice on the running of educational institutions, their structures, salaries, management functioning and accountability. The commission will also have to produce concrete solutions and strategic recommendations to usher in reforms in the education system from the perspective of National Education Policy 2020.
This commission will also look at the establishment of an effective mechanism to ensure pay parity for different categories of teachers and the way forward in issues pertaining to teachers under SSA, rationalization of schools, especially those that are unviable or are surplus, have low or zero enrollment and single teacher schools. It will also look into problems relating to availability of language teachers, especially in border areas.
Separately, the cabinet also decided to create a separate recruitment board for medical services, which will be known as the Meghalaya Medical Services Recruitment Board.
This is being done to address the huge backlog of vacancies – 176 for specialists and 366 for other doctors.
Sangma said that this has been a problem because the Meghalaya Public Service Commission has not been able to conduct interviews and other necessary procedures since 2017, partly due to the Covid-19 pandemic since 2020 and recruitment in other departments.
“In the next two to three months, we will try to ensure that all the recruitment processes for all these posts are completed so that proper services can be given to the people,” the CM said.
Other cabinet matters saw the decision taken to give pension benefits to 3,635 employees who were earlier employed on an ad hoc basis but were regularised on March 15 this year.
This is in keeping with a Supreme Court ruling that employees who were hired before December 31, 2007 on an ad hoc basis, but against a sanctioned post, will be regularized.
The Chief Minister said that those who were earlier regularized will also be entitled to a pension and this will apply to those who have already retired and to those who have died (where the pension will then be paid to family members).
Meanwhile the government has also decided to increase the guarantee amount for loans to physically challenged individuals from Rs 1 crore to Rs 4 crore.
The government will guarantee this higher amount in favor of the National Handicap Finance Development Corporation. People with disabilities are able to take out loans from this corporation that are guaranteed by the state government. In the interest of the disabled, the government has decided to increase the amount it is willing to guarantee.
The state cabinet also decided on instituting a new award, this time for literature. Two awards will be given out annually, one for writing in the Khasi language and one for Garo.
This is an attempt to promote and preserve the state’s main indigenous languages and even strengthen the case for their inclusion in the Eighth Schedule of the Constitution, Sangma said.
Awardees will be given Rs 1 lakh each.
