The Thma U Rangli Juki (TUR) and Workers Power of Meghalaya has demanded the government to accede to the demands of the adhoc school teachers on an ‘emergency basis’ and constitute an education commission to examine the long term pro-people restructuring of the education system in the state.
Pointing out that in the 50th year of Meghalaya statehood, it is shameful that the state consistently remains at bottom of all developmental indicators in India, the organisations said, “In the recent Performance Grading Index of Education Meghalaya came below Bihar in all the indicators. One of the most important indicators was the working conditions of school teachers and not surprisingly we were scraping the bottom of the list.”
While the government make “tiring refrains” has been “financial crisis” when confronted by struggling school teachers, TUR stated there is no financial crisis but financial mismanagement by the government.
“Meghalaya government is all gungho about finding money for big cars, renovating offices, corrupt iconic infrastructural projects, foreign trips, highly paid useless consultants and meaningless events etc. but when it comes to the fundamental needs of any society Food, Health, Housing, Employment and Education, government talks about there being no money,” TUR said.
TUR also referred to the CAG reports and said the account of public finance points to the double speak of the government. “For instance government reduced its expenditure on education Rs. 67 crores in the year 2019-20 (the trend continues) and shockingly did not provide utilization certificate for Rs. 2264 crore rupees of grant it received for education that has resulted in Meghalaya not being able to access grants for improving School education and paying its teachers a respectable wage,” it said.
While extending its support to the adhoc school teacher, TUR said education is too important a sector to be left to the whims of the private players.
