The teacher aligned with Nepal Teachers´ Association (NTA) returned the amount saying that the system of providing the allowance only to the permanent teachers had created a chasm among the permanent, temporary and relief quota teachers. [break]
NTA Taplejung District Chairman Kishor Kumar Rai along with six other teachers deposited Rs 52,000 to the bank account no 6/07 at Nepal Bank from where they had received the payment. Government provides Rs 7,500 annually as uniform allowance to permanent teachers and other administrative staff but temporary staff are denied the facility.
The dissatisfied teachers on Friday issued a statement along with the bank voucher of the money they returned. Matrika Prasad Bhattarai, Netra Nepali, Hom Kumari Sawa, Sant Baraili, Singh Bahadur Iwaram, Ambika Raj Bhandari are the other teachers who returned the allowance amount.
According to Rai, they had started allowance returning campaign from Taplejung, which would expand nationwide, to protest the government discrimination among the teachers and support staff over uniform allowance. Rai was of the opinion that their protest was not against the allowance but against the unfair treatment bt the government.
The statement also demands the government to provide due allowance to the temporary and relief quota teachers. Meanwhile, Taplejung District Chairman of Teachers´ Union of Nepal (TUN), Chhatrapati Pyakurel, who is also ex officio at the District NTA, objected the NTA decision to return the allowance.
According to Pyakurel, it is not the official NTA´s decision but was personal decision of the teachers involved in it.
Pyakurel was of the opinion that the new decisions would contradict the NTA´s previous decision to accept the allowance and pressurize government for the allowance for the teachers other than those in permanent category. However, Matrika Prasad Bhattarai, one of the allowance returning teachers, said that they were forced to step forward after higher authorities could not come up with any decision regarding the issue. “We decided to do so to exert pressure to the central authority and for the well being of all the teacher," said Matrika.
Similarly, the district coordinator of Relief Quota Teacher´s Struggle Committee, Ramesh Adhikari welcomed the move. There are 1,603 teachers working in Taplejung in total.
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