Thiruvananthapuram: The average salary of sweepers in KSEB Limited is Rs 25,000. Home nurses get Rs 13,000- Rs 15,000 a month. Housemaids get anywhere between Rs 12,000 and Rs 15,000. But here is what a high school teacher in an unaided school in Idukki with an experience of more than 20 years gets a month: Rs 10,000. The demeaning pay package of unaided school teachers might finally get addressed. Governor P Sathasivam, during his address in the Assembly on Monday, said that the government will enact a Teachers’ Minimum Wages Act to ensure basic remuneration for unaided school teachers.
He said the Act was also intended to attract the best minds to the teaching profession. “The very foundation of a quality education system is the positioning of teaching as a rewarding profession. My Government recognises that teachers imparting knowledge in private unaided schools will have to be guaranteed a minimum wage,” the Governor said. Minimum wages were fixed in 2007, based on a report by a two-member commission. The minimum for headmasters was Rs 7000, for high school teachers, Rs 6000, for primary school teachers, Rs 5000, and clerks, Rs 4000.
Most unaided schools ignored even this, and persist with paying less than Rs 5000 for even higher secondary school teachers. The annual increment, if at all offered, is in double digits. The situation in government and aided sector is vastly different. The basic pay of a higher secondary school teacher (a post graduate with NET and B.Ed) in the government sector is Rs 45,800.
“I know of teachers with the same qualification who teaches for Rs 8000 in recognised unaided schools,” said K C Harikrishnan of Kerala State Teachers’ Union. (The basic pay of government primary school teachers is Rs 25,200. That of high school teachers is Rs 29,200). Out of 1.65 lakh teachers in the state, nearly 15,000 work in the unaided sector. As it stands, the state had no means to put things right. "The Labour Department, too, cannot intervene because the Industrial Disputes Act and other labour laws did not apply to them," an aide close to the Education minister said. The poor pay mostly affects women as 72.34 percent of teachers in the State are women.
