‘Lakhs of teachers unpaid in June due to fee controversy’

Nagpur: Lakhs of schoolteachers in Maharashtra have not received their May-paid-in-June salaries, says Independent English Schools Association (IESA).
The state-level organization says poor fee recovery has led to a financial crisis in the member schools, which are all state-board affiliated entities. In Nagpur district, many schools have either deferred payment or slashed salaries to tide over the cash crunch.
Rajendra Dayma, president of IESA, claims the association had warned about this impending crisis in May itself. “We had said that around six lakh teachers and one lakh non-teaching staff will go without salaries if the current environment of avoiding fee payment continues,” he said.
“This month, at least three lakh teachers are yet to receive their salaries because our member schools are struggling to arrange funds,” said Dayma. Majority of these schools are under ‘budget category’, meaning the fee structure is low.
“Moreover, we also admit students under RTE for which payments are not coming in many institutes. Now, other parents too don’t want to pay fee, so we are looking at a situation where our members have exhausted their cash reserves and the situation will worsen,” said Dayma, who is trustee of a Jalna-based school.
In Nagpur, even the affluent CBSE schools are struggling to meet their salary payments.
Inderpreet Singh Tuli, director of Edify School, said he had no option but to marginally cut salaries for staff. “I had a discussion with them and said we will never cut jobs, so the only other option was to take a knock on the salaries. Through mutual consent we decided that no cuts will be implemented for peons, guards, maids etc,” said Tuli.
While Tuli spoke on record about the problem, other schools preferred not to be identified by TOI.
One such trustee said, “Salary cuts had to be implemented as a temporary measure because parents are not paying up their dues.” A Nagpur-based CBSE schools association gave a memorandum to district collector Ravindra Thakre stating lack of fee collection will lead to job cuts in the education sector.