Agartala, June 8 (TIWN): Tripura School Education Minister Tapan Chakraborty said that the Department was considering options of granting salary fixation for contract teachers inducted under national flagship schemes like the Sarva Siksha Abhiyan (SSA), Rashtriya Madhyamik Siksha Abhiyan (RMSA) etc as a part of the response to demands tabled by the All Tripura Contract Teachers Association.

The ATCTA held a massive movement in Agartala seeking regularization, grant of pay fixation among other demands on June 03. The forum cited a mandate for Uniform Cadre Policy issued from the National Executive Committee of the Ministry of Human Resource Development (MHRD) and said that the state government was trying to evade responsibilities to regularize its members. Asked about the issue, School Education minister Tapan Chakraborty said in a recent reaction that the state government had asked the Department of Finance to look into the issue and figure out viability of the proposal.

 A recent exercise found out that Rs. 130 crores would be annually required to regularize the teachers and non-teaching staff recruited under the national flagship schemes in Tripura. The National Executive Committee (NEC) doesn’t have any authorization to issue such mandate as these issues are handled by the Mission heads, usually represented by policymakers and people from the government.

 “We wanted to raise questions on the authority of the NEC to issue such mandate. But with a new government in charge now, we didn’t get a chance to raise voice yet”, the minister said. He added that an officers’ level  meeting is expected to be held shortly at New Delhi on national flagship schemes in education sector. The mandate from NEC didn’t mention anything in particular about financial liabilities for regularization of the contract teachers, he added.

The minister stated that the state government had in-principle support to the proposal of extending pay fixation at 1.86 at par with state government employees. The Finance Department is considering the issue. But he ruled out prospects of regularizing them outright and said nothing could be done without clear indications of financial involvements from the centre.