Madhya Pradesh: Honorarium Not Honoured, 70K Guest Teachers Unpaid For 2 Months

Bhopal (Madhya Pradesh): Around 70,000 of the nearly 82,000 guest school teachers in Madhya Pradesh have not received their honorarium for July and August because they could not record attendance electronically on the designated portal.

From this academic session, all teachers are required to mark attendance twice daily on the Education Portal 3.0 using the ‘HamareShikshak’ mobile app, which tracks entry and exit via GPS. Both guest and regular teachers are mandated to use the system.

Ravikant Gupta, state secretary of the Atithi Shikshak Samanvay Samiti, said delegations had repeatedly met Commissioner of Public Instruction and the School Education Minister to accept offline attendance from July 20 (when e-attendance became compulsory) to September 30.

Guest teachers are paid Rs 18,000 (Category-1), Rs 14,000 (Category-2), and Rs 10,000 (Category-3) per month. Many said they were unable to use the app due to lack of smartphones, insufficient funds to charge devices, poor network or portal glitches.

“We all have signed registers and taken classes. That should count as attendance,” one teacher said, noting that delayed honorarium affects survival.

Unlike regular teachers whose portal allows salary release without e-attendance, the system for guest teachers lacks this feature. “The guest teachers are suffering for no fault of theirs,” Gupta said.