The wait for salary increment of thousands of teachers across the state is getting prolonged due to the education department’s delay in implementing the provisions of VII pay commission. The state government has directed all the departments to ensure that all the employees should get increased salaries from January 2017 as per the recommendations of the VII pay commission. Almost all departments of the state government have disbursed the increased salaries but the education department which has large workforce and culture of negligence has failed in this direction. Interestingly the department is apparently flush with funds but the teachers are yet to receive salary due to procedural delay. The department is in fact facing the problem of plenty in budget, for example the office of District Education Officer (DEO) of Pauri has offered to surrender excess budget of Rs 20 crore to the department.
The deputy education officers who head blocks are the drawing and disbursing officers of their respective blocks. It is learnt that in many blocks of the state, the work of salary fixation of teachers is still incomplete due to which the blocks have not sent the demand of salaries to treasury. The primary teachers are worst affected by this delay of the department as almost 60 per cent of them are yet to receive salaries though February is at its fag end.
The general secretary of the Prathmik Shikshak Sangh (PSS), Digvijay Singh Chauhan told The Pioneer that the teachers are suffering due to inefficiency of the department. He blamed that almost all the deputy education officers are new and don’t have any control on the block office staff.
“We were hoping to get incremented salary but we have not received it even after a month. In many blocks of our district our colleagues have received the salary but here we are still waiting,’’ said one of a teacher of Yamkeshwar block of Pauri district.
The primary education director Seema Jaunsari told The Pioneer that the department is having adequate funds and the problem of the non receipt of salaries of teachers in some blocks is being looked into.
