Bengaluru: With the schools reponing date yet to be set because of the rising cases of COVID19, teachers employed in the private sector schools have now gone without salaries for the last few months. In order to sustain themselves and their families, they have started doing jobs, taking roles as daily wage workers, street vendors, temporary clerical jobs, and the like. The Quality of education is also being compromised besides a negative message going out to society. Taking note of this situation, the Primary and Secondary Education Minister S Suresh Kumar has written a letter to CM BS Yeddyurappa requesting him to release the funds to be refunded to private schools under the Right to Education scheme to enable them to release salaries to their teachers.
In his letter, he has mentioned that for the previous year Rs 520 crores and for the present year Rs 275 crores are pending refund to the private schools under the scheme.
There are around 11,500 schools in the state with 5.35 lakhs students studying under the Right to Education scheme and the government is supposed to repay Rs 520 crores for the year 2019-20 to these schools. Also for the year 2020-21, the education department is supposed to refund Rs 570 crores to schools. Totally Rs 1,090 crores are to be paid out to the schools in lieu of education provided to beneficiaries under the RTE scheme.
In the 2020-21 budget, out of the Rs 550 crores sanctioned, Rs 275 crores have been released in the first installment. Still, the amount pending for the previous year is yet to be paid. Hence the whole pending amount of Rs 795 crores needs to be released by the government he urged the CM in his letter.
