The Meghalaya SSA School Association (MSSASA) has threatened to go for a two-day mass casual leave from October 1 if the state government does not realize their various demands by September 30.
The demands include enhancing the salary of the 12,541 SSA teachers in the state, to bring all the SSA teachers under the Education Department and to release pending salaries of three months.
Announcing this at a sit-in demonstration at Malki today, MSSASA president Aristotle C Rymbai said, “On February 16, 2021, the State Project Director of the State Education Mission Authority of Meghalaya (SEMAM) (SSA), Ambrose Marak, invited us for talks and informed us that these demands made by the MSSASA will be on the agenda that will be taken up by the SEMAM executive committee.”
Two days later the Education Minister, Lahkmen Rymbui, also stated that the demands of the SSA teachers are justified.
“More than three years have passed (since the government came to power) but the MDA is still examining the matter, which is nothing but pure lies,” Rymbai said. “We want to send a clear message to Chief Minister Conrad Sangma and to Rymbui that if our demands are genuine then implement it with immediate effect and if not then just throw it in the dustbin.”
On the delay in paying salaries, Marak had reportedly told a delegation of teachers that the state government was waiting on funds from the Centre to pay the teachers. This, Rymbai said, despite the Right to Education Act making it the responsibility of the states to pay teachers in case the central government cannot deliver the funds on time; in 2020 the teachers received their entire year’s salary in December.
With regards to the demand to bring SSA teachers under the Education Department, Rymbai accused the CM of raising the subject when he was a Lok Sabha MP but of doing nothing on the matter after he became head of the Meghalaya government.
Meanwhile, the opposition Congress looked keen to take advantage of the MDA’s difficulties, with its legislators, Himalaya Shangpliang, Zenith Sangma, George Lyngdoh and Mohendro Rapsang, being present at the protest site in solidarity with the teachers today.
