Dismissed non- teaching employees of government-aided schools led a march to Bikash Bhavan on Thursday, demanding that the state government come up with a notification on their recruitment.
They said chief minister Mamata Banerjee announced on May 27 that a recruitment notification for them would be issued “within three to four” days of the notification for sacked schoolteachers.
The recruitment notification for the teachers was issued on May 30.
The notice for the Group C and D employees has yet to be issued.
The protesting non-teaching staff members alleged they had yet to get their monthly allowance, which the state government had promised after the termination of their jobs.
They said they were struggling to survive without any support or clarity on how they would be engaged.
On May 27, Mamata announced that a separate recruitment notification on engaging the sacked Group C and D employees in different departments of the state government would be issued.
An eight-member delegation later met education department officials, seeking to know when they would get the allowance and when the recruitment notification would be issued.
In late April, the chief minister announced that the sacked Group C and D employees would get ₹25,000 and ₹20,000 a month, respectively, as allowance till the crisis was resolved.
The government last month issued a notification about giving the allowance from April.
Bikram Polley, a sacked Group C employee who was part of the eight-member delegation, said: “We are yet to get any allowance. Over 15,000 teachers, who had been sacked on April 3 by the Supreme Court, were later categorised as ‘not specifically found tainted’ in a modified court order on April 17 and are going to school till December and drawing salaries. The state government has come up with a recruitment notification for them. But we have not got any relief. Nobody knows when the notification for us will be issued.”
The Supreme Court, which terminated 25,753 school jobs on April 3 because the entire recruitment exercise in 2016 was “vitiated”, did not give any relief to the non-teaching staff while modifying its order for the sacked teachers.
An apex court division bench said on April 17 that the allegations of irregularities in the appointment of Group C and D employees were “substantially high” and therefore no relaxation could be offered to them.
“We are struggling to survive. The state government does not seem to be concerned about us. The officials at the meeting said they needed 10 days to start the allowance. The recruitment notice would be issued in a week or two, they said. If they fail to deliver, we will start an indefinite agitation,” said Polley.
An education department official said they could not start the allowance as all the applications from the non-teaching employees had not come.
“In the recruitment notification, we are trying to give them (non-teaching staff) certain advantages in the selection process on the lines of what has been offered to the in-service teachers. Working out these additional advantages is taking time,” the official said.