Edu dept revamp leaves 1.12L teachers waiting for salary

CHENNAI: Due to inefficient revamping of the school education department in early October, nearly 1.12 lakh teachers of Government Aided (GA) schools in Tamil Nadu will not receive their October month salary, on Monday. Department has however claimed that the hold up in mapping the new posts has led to the delay in salary credit.

For reasons such as cost-cutting and effective administration of the department, the State government in October revamped the whole administration set-up of the department, including shelving several posts and reshuffling schools.

Additionally, in October the department also transferred several office bearers with more than three years of experience in one location.

Under the Directorate of Elementary Education (DEE), about 1.08 lakh teachers are working at GA schools in the State. Likewise, 1.16 lakh teachers are employed in high and higher secondary GA schools, totalling 2.25 lakh GA teachers.

Incidentally, due to revamping, which witnessed a slew of changes, about 50 per cent of GA teachers will not get their salary on time. Besides this, salary for the five posts newly created under the Block Education Officers (BEOs) will also be delayed.

R Perumalsamy, a GA teacher and state president of the TN Post Graduate Teachers Association said, “District Education Officers (DEOs) are the sanctioning authority for high and higher secondary GA schools in TN. But, during the process of revamping, several DEO posts were shelved thus causing a delay in collating the data for salary credit.”

During revamping, in place of 5 DEOs earlier in Chennai, there are currently only two – in Villivakkam and Saidapet. And these DEOs currently have more than 100 schools under them to coordinate with. Likewise, both in Thiruvallur and Ramanathapuram districts, the number of DEO posts has been shelved from five to two.

Subsequently, K Santhakumar, a GA teacher and general secretary of the TN Teachers Federation said, “In the case of DEE, BEOs are the sanctioning authority for salary credit. But, as one of the two BEO posts was shelved, teachers under those schools are facing a salary delay.”

“Measures are underway to credit the salary without further delay,” a higher official of the education department said.