Dimapur, March 7 (EMN): In the face of various threats of agitation from unpaid teachers across the state, the state’s department of school education has issued a clarification to, what it stated, was bring out the factual position of the releases of funds for implementation of various centrally sponsored schemes like SSA, RMSA and Hindi teachers.
The department issued a press release on Tuesday presenting its case. For the SSA teachers, it stated that under the RTE Act, 2009, it was the collective responsibility of the central government and the state government to provide funds for carrying out the provisions of the Act particularly for “universalisation” of elementary education.
“For 2016-17, an amount of Rs. 30780.84 lakh was approved by the Programme Approval Board (PAB), for implementation of various components including recurring and non-recurring grants under SSA. Out of the approved budget, the share of the government of India which is 90% is Rs. 27070.96 lakh.
The government of India has made the following releases so far, it informed: Table 1
According to the statement, there are strict guidelines and norms for utilization of funds for recurring and non-recurring grants. “General and recurring grant cannot be used for non-recurring grant and vice-versa. Salary comes under General and recurring grant.
“Therefore, out of the 2nd instalment of Rs. 2311.88 lakh which the department is yet to receive including State Matching Share, the department will be able to meet only 2 months' salary of SSA teachers from November to December, 2016.”
It stated that the department was hopeful of getting more release from the union ministry of human resource development in March this year to meet the salary requirement for the remaining months of 2016-17.
“Even though the Annual Work Plan of the state under SSA was approved after thorough appraisal as per the programmatic and financial norms of the scheme, the department has been informed by the MHRD, GOI that the BE for SSA during the current year 2016-17 is Rs. 22,500 crore against the overall approved PAB outlay of Rs. 74,248 crore for all 36 States and UTs of which the central component comes to Rs. 46,700 crore,” it informed.
For RMSA, it stated that the scheme was launched with the view to ‘universalise’ secondary education. “During the 2016-17, the PAB had approved an amount of Rs. 7747.08 lakh out of which Rs. 3548.07 lakh for non-recurring grant and Rs. 4199 lakh was for recurring grant. An amount of Rs. 3983.33 lakh out of the recurring grant is meant for teachers’ salary.
Out of the approved outlay of Rs. 7747.08 lakh, the government has released: Table 2
It stated that it was awaiting the release of the 2nd instalment. “The department will be releasing at least 2 months' salary of RMSA teachers for the months of November and December, 2016 within March as soon as fund is released by the GOI. An amount of Rs. 5326.42 which was received during 2016 is non-recurring grant for the last five years and which cannot be used for payment of salaries.”
Also, for Hindi teachers it stated that the state government had appointed 1379 Hindi Teachers “under CSS called Appointment of Language Teachers” during the 12th Five Year Plan (2012-17) which is “100% funded” by the government of India.
“For the current year 2016-17, the department submitted a proposal of Rs. 4889.06 lakh as salary requirement to the government of India. However, the government of India released only an amount of Rs. 600 lakh in September, 2016. The monthly salary requirement being Rs. 394 lakh, the state government had however, released salary of Hindi Teachers for 3 months.
“The amount released by the GOI is not even sufficient to meet 2 months' salary. The delay in release of fund for Hindi Teachers is due to non placement of fund by the ministry of finance to the MHRD, GOI. Non release and delay in release of fund by the GOI has affected all the 4 states of Nagaland, Mizoram, Orissa and Punjab which are implementing this CSS programme,” it stated.
