The Cabinet Minister’s Sub-Committee appointed by the Government to provide solutions to the demands of the teachers ‘unions successfully resolved 10 out of 11 proposals submitted by the teachers’ unions. As a subcommittee we acted with maximum awareness on this issue.
However, the Ministerial Sub-Committee is unable to provide a solution to the salary issue. This teacher salary issue has a history of 24 years. That is not an issue that started during this government.
The Minister of Environment Mahinda Amaraweera expressed these views while answering a question raised by journalists at a program held at Lunugamvehera last Saturday (16).
The arguments of those associations regarding teacher issues are reasonable. The government never says they are unfair. But the injustice is that even though the government responds so sensitively to this problem, the teachers’ unions do not good respond. Out of the 11 proposals they came up with, they came up with better solutions than they thought. This time the budget will have to allocate money to increase salaries. The last budget did not allocate funds for that. We proposed Rs. 32 billion for this purpose.
As the Minister of Finance, Basil Rajapaksa has offered to provide an additional allowance of Rs.5000. But the teachers’ unions rejected the offer.
However, this is not an insurmountable problem. There is enough time for that.But the children of our country have not had a formal education for two years now due to the closure of schools due to Covid 19. Their age and time expire. It can never be redone.
Innocent children in difficult areas are most affected today by this problem. Teachers in the North and East teach. International schools also taught and successfully teach online in popular schools in Colombo too. But today the innocent children of backward areas who have no facilities and they are suffering from this problem.
Therefore, this issue can be resolved through discussions. We as a government have never stated that we will not address teacher salary anomalies. The government has accepted their problem.
Therefore, we are confident that all teacher unions will work to provide education to children after the commencement of school on the 21st this month. It does not tarnish their self-esteem. They provide education to the children of our nation. Therefore, we are confident that all teachers will come to schools on the 21st and engage in educational activities”he said.