June 29: Over 200,000 teachers and employees associated with private schools across the county have not received their salaries for the last three months.

They are not likely to get paid for longer as it may take more time for the schools to resume their operation. Worse, some schools have already started laying off their teachers and employees.

Schools said they were not paying teachers as they were unable to collect fees from guardians as the government asked them not to take any fees from the guardians during the period of lockdown.

School owners said they failed to pay the teachers after the government failed to give any alternative to its decision to not collect fees from the students.

According to Institutional School Teachers Union (ISTU), about 98 per cent teachers of private schools are not getting their salary from Baisakh (April-March) and only 50 per cent teachers got the salary of Falgun and Chaitra (February, March and April).

Hom Kumar Thapa, chairperson of the ISTU, said even some rich schools were paying only tiny amount to teachers rather than giving them their full salary.

Thapa said when the teachers of community schools were getting their full salary even of the lockdown, teachers of private schools were struggling to get their salary even though they were running online classes even in lockdown.

Thapa said though teachers are in trouble, they can’t speak publicly fearing dismissal from job.

Moreover, a few schools added problems to teachers by firing them from job, Thapa said.

Though teachers and employees associated with private schools are in miserable situation, private school owners claimed that they would not be able to pay the teachers till the government solved the current problems.

When asked why the private schools were not paying teachers and staffs from the profit they made in the past, Tika Puri, chairperson of Private and Boarding Schools’ Association of Nepal (PABSON), said though some schools were in profit, more than 80 per cent were in unsustainable situation because they had been opened for self-employment rather than making a huge profit.

Puri said they were just appealing to the guardians to help sustain the schools, but media and students’ unions opposed it stating that the schools were asking for fees with guardians.

Rituraj Sapkota, chairperson of National Private and Boarding School’s Association Nepal, said the private schools were asking only for monthly fees from guardians which was reasonable as they had been running online classes for children.

He also stated that schools invested their profit in infrastructure development of the same schools.

But educationists pointed out potential risk the education sector could face if the teachers were not paid for a long time.

Teachers as intellectuals may search for alternative sources of livelihood creating a void in teaching-learning process, educationist Dr. Bal Chandra Luitel said. According to him, the teachers could divert to other occupation if the crisis lingered which would be a great loss to the education sector of the country.

The situation arose because of the state policy to allow complete privatisation of sensitive area like education, he added. “Private schools should be run from donation rather than investment. There is no any alternative to running schools under trust if we want to avoid similar problem in the future.”

Dr. Bidhhya Nath Koirala, another educationist, said the government had to allow schools to collect minimum portion of monthly fees from guardians for paying teachers and employees.

However, private schools’ demands for rent management, bank loan management are not reasonable, he said.

Last week, the Ministry of Education, Science and Technology (MoEST) asked the private schools to not collect fees from guardians.  

source: risingnepaldaily, 29 June 2020