SHILLONG, June 29: The Thma U Rangli Juki (TUR) and Workers Power of Meghalaya on Wednesday expressed solidarity with the struggling school teachers under the banner of the Federation of All School Teachers of Meghalaya (FASTOM) who have been forced to camp out in front of the secretariat after being betrayed by the MDA government which consist of NPP, UDP, PDF, HSPDP, five expelled Congress MLAs and some independents.
In a press statement, TUR alleged that cabinet meetings have come and gone without any solution to the legitimate demands of the school teachers.
TUR expressed that in the 50th year of Meghalaya’s statehood it is shameful that the state consistently remains at bottom of all developmental indicators in India, whether it is health or education or food security and this has led to rapid decline in the developmental aspects of the state.
“In the recent Performance Grading Index of Education, Meghalaya came below Bihar in all the indicators and one of the most important indicators was the working conditions of school teachers and not surprisingly we were scraping the bottom of the list,” said the statement.
TUR alleged that one of the tiring refrains from the government when confronted by struggling school teachers has been the financial crisis that the government faces and there is no financial crisis but financial management by the government that has brought this sorry state.
The statement alleged that Meghalaya government is all gungho about finding money for big cars, renovating offices, corrupt iconic infrastructural projects, foreign trips, highly paid useless consultants and meaningless events etc but when it comes to the fundamental needs of any society food, health, housing, employment and education, the government talks about there being no money.
“The CAG reports especially its account of public finance points to this double speak of the government and for instance government reduced its expenditure on education (to) Rs. 68 crores in the year 2019-20 (the trend continues) and shockingly did not provide utilization certificate for Rs. 2264 crore rupees of grant it received for education that has resulted in Meghalaya not being able to access grants for improving School education and paying its teachers a respectable wage ” further said the statement.
TUR believes in quality and accessible public education funded by the state. Education is too important a sector to be left to the whims of the private players and central to this are the teachers.
In this regard, TUR has demanded that the state government on the emergency basis accede to the demands of the teachers and immediately constitute an education commission with representation from all the stakeholders to examine the long term pro-people restructuring of the education system in Meghalaya.
