ROURKELA: About 3,500 Government school teachers under School and Mass Education (SME) and SC/ST Development departments in Sundargarh district are yet to get their arrears of revised pay scale due to apathy of Block Education Officers (BEOs), clerks and accountants. However, after the Director of Elementary Education issued a warning to suspend them for negligence in duty did the errant officials and their sub-ordinates swung into action from Wednesday. The affected teachers have privately hailed the action of the Government.
Director of Elementary Education Chudamani Seth, in a strongly worded letter on March 20, said it was brought to the notice of the Principal Secretary to Government, SME Department that many BEOs are not taking steps to draw 40 per cent arrears salary arising out of revision of pay under Odisha Revised Scales of Pay Rules, 2017. Asking them to give it top priority, the Director wrote that in case the same is not drawn within the stipulated date of March 29, the Drawing and Disbursing Officers (DDOs) and other officials concerned would be placed under suspension.
The BEOs, most of whom are inept and technically not sound, act as DDOs and remain fully dependent on clerks and accountants for preparation of bills and sending them to Government Treasury for payment to individual accounts of teachers. Sources said with the BEOs lacking power, the dealing clerks and the accountants play truant. Such has been the ‘mischievous’ clout of the dealing clerks that at the district level, nobody in the Government sector school education system dares to antagonise them, sources added.
Even teachers’ association leaders refused to be quoted against the mischievous conduct of the clerks and the clerks all the time ‘feign’ that they are over-burdened. They said not only the arrears issue, various other files are kept pending by these clerks and the beleaguered teachers are left at the mercy of the clerks.
With the implementation of the 7th Pay Scale, the Government school teachers are entitled to get `22,000 to `50,000 arrears depending on seniority for the period from January 2016 to December 2017. The clerks and accountants had belatedly sent the data of SC/ST students to the Government in December 2017, while payment of stipend still remains pending from April 2017. The errant clerks and accountants are also somehow responsible for the Gana Sikshaks not getting their pay since December 2017.