Teachers and Principals Gear Up for Massive Demonstration Today
Teacher-Principal Unions have decided to start a protest campaign based on several demands, including the removal of salary disparity.
Ceylon Teachers Union General Secretary Joseph Stalin said that as the first stage of this, a campaign will be held in Kandy city this afternoon (20).
“There is no program regarding the promotions of teachers and principals. They are in a serious crisis. Salaries are reduced when they go from teaching service to principal service. There is no attention in the education authorities regarding the overall problems of the education system. There are only discussions every day. That is why we have to eliminate the disparity in teacher salaries in the system. We are starting a series of massive protests today demanding that the problems be resolved. We will start the first protest in Kandy at 2 pm. We are clearly saying that the government should immediately understand the message we are giving. Under the Teacher-Principal Alliance, teachers, principals, teacher advisors, and accompanying teachers are all parties. We are starting a joint agitation to send a message to the government. We need to solve the problems immediately, otherwise, we will resort to various trade union actions in the future.”
However, Education Minister Susil Premajayantha expressed this opinion regarding the teacher-principal salary disparity.
“From the first of January 2022, a ministerial sub-committee decided and gave one-third of it. It cost 32 billion rupees. The entire public service was increased by 10,000 rupees. Now, if you give that one-third allowance, some people can go to around 12,000 to 13,000 rupees for the maximum number of people. The least people can get an increase of 4,000 rupees, then the government has given everyone an allowance of 10,000 rupees. So that’s why I have made a request and given the government an allowance of 10,000 rupees for the entire public service this year, the possibility of allocating more money is very little. So let’s be aware of this. But we are working on this request next year, so I believe it will be heard fairly.”