Incentives to teachers

Sir,
This has reference to the news item’Govt mulls incentives to teachers serving in difficult areas’ (DE, Aug 26, 2017) It is heartening to read that the State Government is mulling attractive monetary incentives to teachers, masters, lecturers and assistant professors working in farflung and difficult areas, with a view to overcome the shortage of teachers in such pockets.What is appreciable is that the proposed special incentive in the form of multiplied House Rent Allowance (HRA) or double honorarium is also being extended to the contractual lecturers engaged on the basis of academic arrangement and serving in such areas and that the concerned authorities are  on the job to work out modalities and financial implications of this proposal.
Generally ,what happens is that teachers avoid to be transferred to hilly and difficult areas with the result that the schools in such areas face huge shortage of staff and the academic activities get adversely affected. Consequently, the students studying in the schools falling in such remote areas are worst affected and they find it difficult to compete with their counterparts studying in cities.There used to be a time when these difficult areas were classified into various categories of difficulty and Compensatory Allowance(CA) @45% and even 100% of the basic pay was given to the employees serving in such areas and many  employees would volunteer to serve in such areas.But then, the rate  of CA was revised and now it is paid slab wise, which is too meagre to attract the teachers to such areas.As most of these areas are located in notified RBA areas, the shortage of staff can also be overcome by strictly implementing the Reservation Act in letter and spirit and ensure that the teachers and other employees selected on the basis of RBA/ALC category are mandatorily posted in such areas to benefit the students and the people of these areas.In many cases, teachers selected on these categories manage their postings in or around cities and towns, thus affecting the activities in such areas badly.
It is hoped that  the Govt will move ahead with this proposal and all these steps will be taken at the earliest to improve the academic activities in the schools in farflung and hilly areas.
Yours etc….
Ashok Sharma,
Housing Colony, Udhampur

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