Sardarpur (Madhya Pradesh): Scores of government school teachers from Sardarpur tehsil of Dhar district are nowadays being hounded by the shopkeepers for payment, courtesy non-availability of contingency amount.
Every year, the government provides Rs 25,000, Rs 50,000, and Rs 75,000 to each school in accordance with the number of students registered for maintenance and operation.
However, the government has yet to provide a contingency amount to the schools this year. As a result of that, school teachers purchased school supplies on credit at the beginning of the academic session, and now the shopkeepers are hounding them for payment.
Sardarpur tehsil has approximately 450 primary, middle, high school, and higher secondary schools.
The School Management Committee of the school spends this money on stationery, tables for teachers, chairs, napkins, student furniture, chalk, charts, maps, blackboards, painting and school painting, and so on.
However, this time the teaching session is nearing its end, but the government has yet to provide schools with a contingency fund.
At the start of the academic year, the teachers purchased school supplies from shopkeepers in the hope that the shopkeepers would be paid once they got the funds from the government until the end of August. But even at the end of the ongoing academic session, schools have yet to receive the contingency amount. As a result, the teachers have been unable to pay the amount purchased from the shopkeepers. The shopkeepers are now putting pressure on the teachers to pay.
Contingency fund to be given in March: BRC
Previously, the funds were deposited in the account of the school management committee.
Teachers, speaking on the condition of anonymity, stated that the funds had previously been deposited in the account of the school management committee. The contingency amount was deposited in the account of the School Management Committee of the schools until the academic session 2020–2021. However, in 2021, the government ordered that all of the school management committee's bank accounts be closed.
The government allocated funds to the Block Resource Coordinator (BRC) office for the academic year 2021–2022. By calling the shop from which the material was to be purchased and arranging the proposal with the school management committee, BRC paid the bill directly into the shopkeeper's bank account.
However, this process has not yet begun this year. As a result, teachers are required to repay loans to shopkeepers, and school maintenance has become a serious issue. The shopkeepers are pressuring the teachers to pay for the borrowed materials.
Meanwhile, when contacted, BRC Bootsingh Bhanwar of Sardarpur said that they received an order from the State Education Center in Bhopal recently and that the amount will be distributed in March.
