Nitish Regularizes 4 Lakh Teachers & Librarians, Raises Retirement Age Of Docs
Just a few weeks ahead of the Bihar elections the Nitish Kumar govern ment on Thursday prospec ted voters, first by confirm ing four lakh contrac teachers and librarians, and then by raising the retire ment age of government doc tors from 65 to 67 years with immediate effect.
The sops will leave the al ready depleted state exchequer poorer by nearly `3,000 crore Kumar was recently attacked by several angry ad hoc teach ers in Khagaria who were de manding permanent status and he appears to have “given in“ to the growing pressure, es pecially since the move could fetch him votes.
The decisions, which wil have huge financial implications on the state where Kumar's pre-election promise of implementing prohibition alone will add a revenue deficit of `4000 crore, betray signs of his nervousness, said a political observer, adding, “Such appeasement politics is not a sign of a confident chief minister.“ Soon after the cabinet meeting, principal secretary (education) R K Mahajan told TOI that all schoolteachers, both trained and untrained, and librarians would be covered under the UTI Retirement Benefit Pension Fund, towards which the government's contribution would be `200 per teacherlibrarian per month.
These teachers would be entitled to 3% of their basic salary as yearly increment, he said. A high-level committee has been set up to decide their service conditions, rules, promotion policy , disciplinary action, in-service training, interschool transfers, etc., he added.
The principal secretary , education, has been made the committee's member-secretary. The committee would submit its report to the government within three months, Mahajan said.
The cabinet also agreed to table the 1989 Bhagalpur communal riots inquiry report -the panel was set up under the chairmanship of Justice (retd) N N Singh -in the assembly for the implementa tion of its recommendations.The report was submitted to the government on February 28 this year.
The number of trained contract teachers in primary schools is 2.45 lakh and untrained teachers 62,031. Similarly, in secondary schools there are 26,774 trained teachers. The number of librarians in such schools is 1900.These teachers will also get the revised salary as per the recommendations of the seventh pay commission. Besides, they will get house rent allowance, medical allowance and dearness allowance (DA).
More than 4,000 government doctors, including `ayush', `ayurvedic', `unani' and homeopathic practitioners, are likely to benefit.
