Teachers in East Delhi Municipal Corporation (EDMC) schools have not received their salaries for the past five months. Since it has been so long and they have not received a favorable response from the EDMC, the teachers filed a petition with the Delhi High Court on May 5 to order the municipal company to pay the arrears.
According to the petition filed by lawyer Ashok Agrawal, if the EDMC is unable to pay the salaries, the teachers have asked the court to order them to transfer control of all their schools to the Delhi government.
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ANI news agency reported that the petitioners have argued that moving these schools to the Delhi government would not only ensure regular payment of salaries to teachers but also significantly raise educational standards.
The petition is expected to be heard by the Supreme Court on Monday. The plea states that EDMC has 365 primary schools with a total of 5000 teachers. It claimed that the EDMC had not paid the salary of any of these teachers from December 2021 to April 2022.
The teachers are having trouble paying their household expenses, children’s school fees and various EMIs due to non-payment of salaries.
The teachers claimed that the EDMC’s inefficient operations had created an artificial financial emergency, allowing them to avoid or delay paying salaries to their employees.
The plea alleged that EDMC’s primary schools are bound by the Children’s Right to Free and Compulsory Education Act of 2009. It argued that under Section 7 of the 2009 RTE Act, the central government and state governments are jointly responsible for providing financial resources to carry out the requirements of the law.
The petitioners argue in their plea that if schools are handed over to the NCT government, it would not only guarantee the payment of salaries to its employees, but also that there would be a remarkable improvement in the quality of education. Nearly 1 lakh students are currently studying in 365 EDMC primary schools.
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