After upper, now primary school teachers take to the street demanding salary hike

Shillong, Nov 15:  2012 seems to be a year of teachers’ agitation. After the upper primary school teachers agitation, now it is the turn of the all Meghalaya adhoc lower primary school teachers to take to the streets as hundred of them gathered opposite the Shillong Raj Bhavan Thursday forenoon to demand increase in their salary.

Under the banner of the All Meghalaya Adhoc Lower Primary School Association (AMALPSA), the adhoc teachers carried banners to express their resentment at the failure of the Meghalaya government to respond to their memorandum submitted to the Meghalaya education minister RC Laloo July 5, 2012 demanding increase in their salary.

The adhoc teachers’ under the umbrella of AMALPSA, who came from Khasi and Jaintia hills,  led by its president B Marbaniang and general secretary  RS Khardawsaw lamented that the primary school teachers are getting only three thousands rupees every month as salary. They said, “The pay is a clear violation of Article 14 of the constitution which states the principle of “Equal pay for Equal Work.”

Marbaniang informed that the government had increase the adhoc primary school teachers salary from Rs 1500 to Rs 3000 in 2007 but complaint that the amount was paltry and does not commensurate with their workload. He said, “ Government called us the builder of the nation, but we have been neglected so much that it is impossible for us to survive with the salary given to us.

In Meghalaya there are 1116 adhoc teachers from primary school. Some like Marbaniang has been working for the last nineteen years and drawing only three thousand rupees as his salary.-By Our Reporter