All the schools in Danabari and Mahamai Village Development Committees (VDC) and four schools in Chisapani VDC of the Chure region of Ilam district depend on a regular financial assistance from the community forests to pay their teaching and non-teaching staff. [break]
The 13 schools in Danabari and 11 in Mahamai along with the Garuwa Multiple Campus of Danabari depend upon the community forests.
“Out of the two teachers recruited on private resources, we have paid the salary to one for the Ashwin month, while the other has been compensated only for the month of Bhadra,” the principal of Bal Kalyan Primary School in Danabari-1, Mukunda Dahal, said.
“We paid them last time by requesting Sunakhari and Kaikhola community forests. But there is no way we can pay the salary from now on,” Dahal added.
Principal of Sishu Sewa Lower Secondary School, Gopal Ghimire, also related the difficulty in paying three teachers and a peon hired on private resources. “We somehow paid them till Dashain with the money from our fund. But we don´t have any money to pay them further,” Ghimire revealed. The consumers´ committee of Kanakai and Saraswati community forests had been paying the staff´s salaries until the ban.
Deep Jyoti Primary School, on the other hand, is now facing criticisms after it paid two teachers, contracted on private resources, the Rs 70,000 received from Danabari VDC for construction of a building.
Garuwa Primary School of Danabari paid its teachers with Rs 60,000 collected from Deusi during the recent Tihar festival. A member of the school management committee, Yam Rijal, said all four teachers in the school, opened with financial assistance from Namuna Community Forest, have been hired on private resources with permission from the District Education Office. The schools that were opened or upgraded with assistance from community forests have been facing financial difficulty.
“We cannot collect fees to pay the staff being a government school. Nor can we ask the parents already troubled by extortion and demands for donations from different organizations and groups,” a teacher at Kanchan Primary School, Shukraj Limbu, said.
Garuwa Multiple Campus, that has a monthly wage bill of Rs 120,000, is also facing serious difficulty to continue paying its teachers. “We can´t generate enough fees due to lower number of students. We can´t even ask the community forests as they themselves are facing financial hardship,” a member of the campus management committee, Dhruba Shrestha, reasoned.
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