Sans salary, dark days ahead for 5.3k ZP schoolteachers

Nagpur: Around 5,300 teachers of Nagpur Zilla Parishad (ZP) schools won't be getting paid for November, and maybe even the month after that, as the online process for submission of their salary/wage bills has completely stopped.

Surprisingly, it has been stopped by the teachers themselves as part of a larger protest to boycott all online work which they claim is interfering with their academic duty. After Diwali, teachers will have to deal with empty salary accounts till the issue is resolved.

Sharad Bhandarkar, general secretary of MNS Shikshak Sanghatna, said "All this technical online job is not the responsibility of teachers and headmasters. They are in schools to teach and unfortunately their entire time is being taken away because of the need to sit daily in front of the computer and upload data about midday meals, direct benefit transfers, school records, staff records etc. Now, everyone has lost their patience and cannot do the balancing act anymore. So, all the online work now stops completely."

This means boycotting processing paperwork for their own salary. Sanjay Chamat, coordinator of an ad hoc committee formed by various teacher and political organizations for the protests, said "Now, it is the government's job to ensure that it brings in the manpower required to complete the pending task and release salary for November so that teachers can cope with expenses that arise post-Diwali."

ZP chairperson Nisha Sawarkar told TOI that she has not yet been apprised of this development. "I am down with viral fever for last the few days and have not gone to office. Tomorrow, I will be there for a couple of hours because of an important meeting, so will definitely follow up on this issue," said Sawarkar.

ZP CEO Kadambari Balkawde did not respond to TOI's calls or SMS.

Bhandarkar said ZP has not acted on their recommendation for appointing a technical person to take care of data filing work. "ZP had promised us that a clerk will be appointed who will look after all this online work, but nothing has happened till date. The infrastructure at resource centres is almost non-existent due to lack of equipment like printers, poor net connectivity etc. So, from now on, it is the administration's responsibility to ensure that all paperwork is completed and salaries of these 5,000 teachers are paid on time," said Bhandarkar.

Wednesday is also the last day for completing the teachers' online transfer (post/school allocation stage) process. Bhandarkar said, "The transfer process is riddled with many problems as it does not consider the number of years spent by a teacher in remote area but his/her seniority. This means that senior teacher who has worked for only three years in a remote area is eligible for transfer while a junior who has been there for a decade is not."