Tirupati: Private school teachers turn labourers

Tirupati: The Covid-19 resultant lockdown has brought crisis into the lives of private school teachers and made them work as labourers. After the announcement of lockdown all private, corporate and government schools were closed.

Barring a very few schools, all other managements are not paying salaries to their staff for the last three months citing Covid-19 as the reason. Some schools have calculated the salaries for 20 days in March and paid that amount only while some others have paid only 50 per cent salaries for that month. It is learnt that there are certain school managements, which have not paid the salaries since January.

There are about 40,000 teaching staff working in around 1,250 private and corporate institutions in Chittoor district. As they were at the mercy of their managements, they could not raise their voice to echo their woes. A primary section teacher in a private school has said that except a few all others were not getting salaries. They were not sure whether they will be called for work again.

Helpless educated teachers in their struggle for livelihood are working as labourers, paper and milk boys and fruit vendors among others. Mostly in rural areas, teachers have been attending several drought-related works for a meagre sum of Rs 230 to Rs 240 per day.

A mathematics teacher A Hari Prasad working at a private school in Madanapalle has now donned the role of a lorry cleaner while some others are involved in agriculture activities.

The General Secretary of Private Teachers and Lecturers Association P Mani told The Hans India that majority of schools are not following the government order which states that private schools need to pay salary for 12 months irrespective of summer vacation and 50 per cent of their profits are to be paid as salaries.

The situation is so pathetic and the meetings with officials concerned have not given any solace so far.

"The government has appointed a regulatory commission on our problems and it has to be seen how they sort out these issues. Future becomes so uncertain with several colleges contemplating the idea of removing most of the teachers as they want to go for online classes engaging senior most faculty," he observed.