Staff Correspondent
Port Blair, Oct 4: Despite routine reports in the media, coordination glitches between government agencies have helped sustain stress to peak for several teachers employed under the Sarva Shiksha Abhiyan.
According to reports, the Education Department has not yet released the salaries of the SSA teachers for the past two months spoiling the festive season ahead of their families.
While officials cite fund crunch as the reason for the delay, SSA teachers allege administrative lapses behind the recurring delay in disbursal of salaries over the years.
“It has become very difficult for us to pull on and manage our household expenditures without receiving salaries on time. We are compelled to borrow money from friends and relatives and it’s quite a loss of face when we are not able to repay in time. We’ve to pay our house rents on time or face the ire of the landlord. Moreover, the ensuing festive season has added to our woes. How do we purchase new clothes for our children? We’re already poorly paid and delay in disbursal of wages has pushed us to misery,” said some SSA teachers.
“Delay in release of salaries has now become a recurrent phenomena for the teachers employed under the Sarva Shiksha Abhiyan scheme. Such delay occurred even last year and our wages were released after Andaman Sheekha published a hard hitting story on our plight. Despite being employed for the past several years in the Education Department, we are perhaps the lone group of workers in the islands, who don’t receive their salaries on time. This time the department has held up the wages for the past two months i.e August and September. We’re hopeful that the Secretary of Education Department will surely come to our rescue and release the salaries before the Durga puja,” they added.
