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Dimapur, Oct. 7 (EMN): The government of Nagaland on Wednesday requested the Naga Students’ Federation (NSF) and the Eastern Naga Students’ Federation (ENSF) to re-consider and withdraw the proposed agitation, especially in view of the prevailing Covid-19 pandemic situation.
The request came two days after the student bodies announced a state-wide bandh on the movement of government-registered NL 10 and NL 11 vehicles from October 12, to protest the state government’s failure to ‘mainstream’ the Sarva Shiksha Abhiyan (SSA) and Rashtriya Madhyamik Shiksha Abhiyan (RMSA) teachers of 2010 and 2013 batches.
Special Secretary to the state government issued a statement on Wednesday, informing that Chief Secretary in-charge J Alam had convened a meeting on October 6 to review the progress of mainstreaming SSA and RMSA teachers into the School Education cadre.
It informed that the state Cabinet on October 5, 2018, had agreed in principle to mainstream SSA and RMSA teachers of 2010 and 2013 batches into the State Education cadre based on the recommendations of the Committee constituted to study the nature of the recruitment and appointment of these categories of teachers, ‘while directing the department to merge unviable schools and give golden handshake to underqualified and untrained teachers’.
It went on to state that the School Education department had reported the actions taken to fulfil the stipulated conditions and highlighted the decisions taken at last month’s meeting to NSF and ENSF. It said the decisions included: Seniority list of SSA and RMSA teachers of 2010 and 2013 batches to be examined and cleared by P&AR department; estimation of financial implication on account of mainstreaming and concurrence by Finance department; and freezing of 75% of the vacancies of teachers occurring annually under Directorate of School Education, after which the proposal for mainstreaming would be submitted to the Cabinet.
‘Department of P&AR has already accorded clearance to the seniority list and Finance deptartment has examined the financial implications,’ it said, adding that despite the shortfall in the financial support from GOI towards salary and state’s financial constraints, the concerned teachers are ‘already being given scale pay with regular increments’. This has cost the state government more than INR 300 crore, and that “mainstreaming” would incur an additional expenditure of about INR 82 crore.
The government has requested the student bodies and stakeholders to appreciate the progress made so far on the matter and let it carry out the required procedures. It also opined that ‘taking up internal service matters of government employees through public agitation is not a healthy precedent as it will cause hardships to the people at large and adversely affect delivery of public service’.