The Kerala High Court on Thursday directed the state to consider increasing the salary of pre-primary teachers from Rs 900 to Rs 5,000 and the salary of ayahs in pre-primary schools from Rs 600 to Rs 3,500.
Justice C N Ramachandran Nair and Justice Babu Mathew P Joseph issued the order while considering a petition filed by the Kerala Pre-primary Teachers Association challenging the Single Bench order declaring that the state has no responsibility to pay salary to teachers and ayahs in the government schools.
The court observed that pre-school training is preparation of a child for schooling and hence part of the elementary education. It has to be necessarily provided by the state at its cost to the poor children who depend on government schools.
“The government is obliged to give reasonable wages to the qualified teachers serving in pre-primary schools and also to ayahs for the full time work they are doing in the school,” the court said. There are 2,102 pre-primary school teachers and 1,191 ayahs working in government sector.
During the hearing, the state submitted that salary will be hiked by Rs 900 and Rs 600 to teachers and ayahs respectively.
“The total expenses of the government in this sector is likely to be in the region of Rs15-16 crore. This won’t be a huge burden for the state considering the noble objective it’s going to achieve,” the court opined.
Considering the inflation rate and other factors, the salary of the teachers should be hiked, the court added. The wages paid by the government for teachers are ridiculously low and it has to be hiked to reasonable levels.
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