RMSA teachers to intensify agitation

Kohima, Aug. 29 (EMN): The agitation of the Rashtriya Madhyamik Shiksha Abhiyan’s (RMSA) batch-2016 teachers has entered its third day. The teachers are boycotting class protesting pending salary; they have not been paid for four months i.e., April-July, it was informed. The teachers are demanding redress for government regulations that are said to have been stipulated in an office memorandum issued by the government that the RMSA’s subject teachers’ salary would be a fixed pay of INR 25,000 per month from 2018-19. The RMSA teachers started their agitation on August 27, boycotting classes in their demand to the government to release pending salary, and that they won’t be accepting the new ‘guidelines’ issued by the government. An office memorandum dated Aug. 17 2018 stated to be a “notice to contractual subject teacher engaged by state mission office, RMSA Nagaland” read that the ministry of Human Resource Development had integrated the erstwhile Sarva Shiksha Abhiyan and Rashtriya Madhyamik Shiksha Abhiyan into a single entity named the “Samagra Shiksha Abhiyan” from 2018-19 onward. As a policy from the merger, it stated that the government of India had issued guidelines fixing the salary payable to RMSA subject teachers at INR 25,000 per month from 2018-19. In this regard, the RMSA teachers were directed to submit their acceptance of the new salary scale prescribed by the Central government within a month’s period from the notice being issued. The memorandum was issued through Principal Secretary Menukhol John. It stated: “This OM is issued in pursuance of the clause given for condition of salary as indicated in the engagement order along with the termination clause.” The RMSA batch’s President Sao Venuh talked to Eastern Mirror. Besides the ‘non-release’ of the salary, Venuh said, a new development had cropped up in regard to the OM that was served to the RMSA teachers. Despite its request to the department, the state had issued the notice seeking submission of the teachers’ acceptance ‘through signing of a bond’ of the new salary prescribed by the Centre within a month’s period from the date the notice was issued, Venuh said. Terming the memorandum a “severe and serious issue” for the teachers, Venuh said that the “OM has threatened the teachers to the extent of termination of our services.” In such a juncture, he said, they had no option but to go for agitations. Asserting that the teachers shall not back off from the demand, Venuh maintained that they would rather intensify the agitation and challenge the government ‘if they really care for the students’ and its employees. He added that there had been no response from the government as yet in spite of the classes being boycotted for three days. The teachers will intensify their agitation from next week in the form of a ‘silent protest,’ the updates said.