Mumbai: Five months after the government announced that night school teachers would work full-time, the teachers are still receiving their salary as per the part-time shift. As per government rule, a full-time employee is bound to get facilities, including pension and housing-dearness allowances, but these teachers have not yet been informed about whether they would receive these perks by the state.
There are around 550 teachers working in 136 state-run night schools in the city. The government on May 17, 2017 for the first time in 125 years issued a government resolution (GR) concerning these teachers where they started making the part-time night school teachers full-timers.
An important difference between a part-time and full-time or permanent night school teacher is the allowance and pension facilities given to them. “Allowance like travelling, dearness and house rent is provided to the full-time teachers which we too are bound to get as we were made full-time in the month of May. However, no further decisions were made by the government or the education department, so basically we are still part-timers,” complained Darshana Pandav, a teacher at Amar Shaheed Night School, Sion.
“Civic schools have so many competitions for their students but have you heard about any kind of such thing from a night school? When the government announces something, it only concerns the day school students and teachers, not for us,” said another night school teacher.
