5 days after youth’s suicide, J&K teachers get due wages
Five days after a 24-yearold son of a Kashmiri school teacher who had not received salary for two-and-a-half years committed suicide because he could no longer watch his family suffer, the government on Wednesday released Rs 33 crore as payment of salaries of 630 schoolteachers.
On May 28, a Kashmiri youth committed suicide over denial of salary to his father, a schoolteacher. In a video, recorded by Sho’ab Bashir minutes before consuming poison to end his life and which went viral later, the postgraduate student said that he was no longer able to take family’s miseries after his father’s salary was stopped for the past twoand-a-half years, “pushing the family to a brink.”
The incident evoked public outrage in Kashmir with various trade unions of government employees and several political parties demanding stern action against the officials responsible for withholding the salaries of hundreds of schoolteachers on “flimsy grounds”. These teachers had accused a former director of the education department
Mohammad Yunus Malik for allegedly sitting on files. The authorities had, however, cited “deficiency of documents and verification” as reason for not releasing the salaries of these teachers. Officials had privately also said that the salary of Sho’ab’s father Bashir Ahmed Mir was stopped apparently over his alleged past links with separatists because of which the police had not given him the mandatory clean chit.
Bashir Ahmed Mir told local news agency KNO that though the school education department has released his salary, it is being disbursed under the 6th Pay Commission, whereas he is entitled to get it as per the 7th Pay Commission. “If I’m not getting my rightful salary as per the 7th pay commission, I will not accept it,” Mr Mir said.
He further said that he was released from police custody in 1998 after which he was recruited as Rehbar-e-Taleem teacher in the school education department. “After my appointment, the crime investigation department (CID) in its verification had said that the person (Mir) has been silent since his release in 1998 and is busy with his profession”, he claimed, adding that in March 2019 his salary was withheld by the then director of school education Kashmir, giving the cases pending in high court as reason for it.
“However, I had got a clean chit from CID and police,” he said and added, “Last week my son ended his life after he couldn’t pay the examination fee for his masters’ degree and seeing the miserable financial condition we have been going through.”