Haryana: 5,000 ‘shiksha preraks’ without honorarium for over a year

Blame it on the official lethargy or red tape in Haryana’s secondary education department, over 5,000 ‘shiksha prerak’ — teachers hired by panchayats — who teach non-literate people in rural interiors of the state have been without their honorarium since September 2013.

Reason: The Haryana education department has failed to submit the state utilisation certificate to National Literacy Mission — the funding authority — for 2012, 2013 and 2014. The programme was started in the state in August 2012.

Even though the ‘preraks’ have been seeking hike in honorarium, they have been deprived of Rs 2,000 per month since August 2013. This is despite their repeated representations to the authorities of the department concerned.

Villages in 62 blocks of 10 districts of Haryana, which had female literacy rate of below 50% were chosen for the said programme. These districts are Fatehabad, Mahendergarh, Bhiwani, Hisar, Sirsa, Jind, Kaithal, Karnal, Faridabad and Gurgaon. All the ‘preraks’ — a male and a female for a village — were chosen by panchayats who held daily classes with flexible timings and centres (panchayat ghar, school or anganwadi), depending upon the time available for persons above 15 years of age in their respective villages.

While, director, secondary education, ML Kaushik said though he was not in the know of the issue as he had joined the department recently he said he would have it looked into, several ‘preraks’ HT talked to spoke of their plight.

Bhagwat Kaushik from Bhiwani, president of the Haryana Shiksha Prerak Sangh, and Prem Singh, another sangh leader from Fatehabad, held that it was irony that they had been spending on their own to carry on the teaching work while the government had turned a blind eye towards their demands. The non-payment of the honorarium had hit the morale of the ‘preraks’ hard, Kumar said. Kaushik added that this had also decimated the mission as well and has reduced the interest of teachers and the taught alike.

Stationery not available

Several ‘shiksha preraks’ HT talked to said besides the honorarium, they had also not been given any study material and stationery such as copies, books and pencils since 2012. “However, since most of the ‘preraks’ belong to the same village they come from, they tend to do whatever is possible at their own level,” Kumar said.

Some panchayats have more than one villages under them and ‘preraks’ travel on their own, Kaushik said, adding that their services were also use for election duty this year and were not paid for that work also.