Valley
Education Ministry needs Rs 5b to fund teacher redundancy programme
The Ministry of Education, Science and Technology has sought Rs 5 billion from the Finance Ministry to fund its golden handshake scheme for temporary teachers who have failed the test for permanent status and those who have chosen voluntary retirement.Binod Ghimire
The Ministry of Education, Science and Technology has sought Rs 5 billion from the Finance Ministry to fund its golden handshake scheme for temporary teachers who have failed the test for permanent status and those who have chosen voluntary retirement.
The golden handshake will be offered in three categories: those with service period of 5-10 years, 10-15 years and above 15 years. Temporary teachers in the first category will be entitled to an amount equal to 15 days’ salary for each year of their service, while those in the second and third categories will be paid one month’s salary and 45 days’ salary for each year of their service.
The severance pay would range from around Rs100,000 to Rs1 million depending on the service period of teachers and their level.
Bishnu Prasad Mishra, assistant spokesperson at Education Ministry, said the Finance Ministry is yet to respond to their request.
Following several rounds of demonstrations by temporary teachers, different governments in the past had agreed to provide redundancy package to the teachers who chooses voluntary retirement or fails the test conducted by Teachers Service Commission.
Hardly two-thirds of the teachers who took the test have qualified for the oral examination. The commission is yet to publish the results for primary and secondary level teachers, but the trend suggests that the pass rate will not exceed 60 percent.
A total of 23,386 temporary teachers had applied for 22,076 permanent positions in primary, lower secondary and secondary levels. Around 15,500 teachers have passed the written test. Officials say this number is likely to lower after the oral examination.
Tulasi Thapaliya, chief administrative officer of the commission, said there was little competition among the cohort of teachers who had joined the service before 1992 or between 1992 and 2005, because they only needed to secure pass mark in written to become eligible for oral exam.
The competition was fierce among those teachers who had joined the service after 2005, he added.
Following pressure from temporary teachers, the legislature parliament in September 2018 had amended the Education Act, clearing the deck for announcing internal vacancies for temporary teachers recruited before August 6, 2004. The teachers had to obtain the pass mark (40 out of the 100 full marks) to be eligible for permanent status.