RAIPUR: Deprived of salary for seven months, a government school teacher lost her ailing husband as she failed to provide him proper treatment in Balrampur district. While she temporarily managed few medicines buying them on credit, she couldn’t get help from her colleagues either as they too were facing crisis without salary.
Hundreds of government teachers (shikshakarmi) have been complaining about not getting salary in time which extends till seven to eight months, while they claim that their salaries are allotted turn by turn as per the districts.
According to information, the government school teacher Lilly Grace Minj hailing from Ramchandrapur of Balrampur district lost her husband who was ailing with a heart disease after she couldn’t provide him proper treatment in scarcity of money.
Lilly told media persons that she had to convince medical store owners to provide her medicines on credit and she used to manage temporarily. She said that if she had the money she would have taken her husband to other cities for better treatment, but it was already a struggle to provide him treatment at Balrampur itself.
Lilly had to mortgage her ornaments for whatever treatment she could provide for during her husband’s ailing days but she feels extremely disappointed that she couldn’t save his life. “I couldn’t ask for money from my colleagues either, as they too were facing the same crisis. It has been seven months, we haven’t been paid for our work.”
Blaming it upon the system and administration, the shikshakarmis enraged over the death of Lilly’s husband and calling them insensitive, decided to protest.
In a recent incident, one such shikshakarmi had written to collector during Loksuraj campaign to speed up process of allotment of salary else he would commit suicide.
Later, they were promised that the process has already begun and as per the information, it was on Tuesday that the teachers were called to headquarters to collect the salary.
However, the block education officer AP Singh was quoted as saying that “the salaries were paid till January 2017, rest death is in the hands of God. Lilly should have contacted me if she was in crisis.”
According to shikshakarmis, the delay in salaries of teachers is very common across the state. “Although chief minister Raman Singh has in Vidhan Sabha said that the teachers are supposed to get salaries by 5th of every month, it takes more than 15 days for salaries to be allotted. Moreover, in many cases like that of Balrampur, Udaipur and neighbouring regions in Surguja, salaries take months to get allotted.”
It seems that they are allotted in rotation, if Bastar teachers get salaries this month, that means Surguja teachers won’t get it and have to wait for their turn.
When tried to contact, Balrampur collector Awanish Sharan wasn’t available for comments.
