Nagaland SSA Teachers’ Association (NSSATA) has demanded immediate release of the pending salary to SSA teachers.
In an open letter to chief minister, school education minister, school education director and SSA director on Wednesday, NSSATA called for adherence to the government’s letter of November 2016 that assured regular payments of monthly salaries to SSA teachers. The teachers should not be made to beg for their hard-earned “paltry salary” and instead be enthusiastically teaching in schools, it added.
While acknowledging various welfare activities being initiated by the present government, NSSATA said it was constrained to write the open letter appealing for redressal of the “immeasurable hardships” being faced by the teachers.
Reminding the government that the SSA teachers had not been paid for the last five months (from November 2017 till March this year), the letter said salary payment had been irregular since 2013. The matter has been made known to the concerned authority a number of times in the form of representations, meetings with authorities concerned and even stirs, it added and recalled the dharna at the directorate of school education office in 2016 where unpaid teachers, including nursing mothers from far flung areas, had participated to show resentment and where the administration had used a water cannon to try and disperse them.
Stating that the SSA teachers were experiencing “dry Christmas” and “dry New Year” for the past four years, the association also lamented that while the authority concerned talked about welfare of school children, the salary of teachers – their only source of income – was held up for several months.
NSSATA said the bright future of students in the State was imperilled as teachers with empty stomachs could not provide quality education.
The open letter was signed by the association’s Wokha unit general secretary Z Libenthung Murry.