Teachers’ salaries to be now paid from coop bank headed by BJP MLC
MUMBAI: The state government on Tuesday directed government and government-aided schools in the city to open salary accounts for their teaching and non-teaching staff in the Mumbai District Cooperative Bank headed by BJP MLC Praveen Darekar
MUMBAI: The state government on Tuesday directed government and government-aided schools in the city to open salary accounts for their teaching and non-teaching staff in the Mumbai District Cooperative Bank headed by BJP MLC Praveen Darekar. Darekar is known as a close aide of deputy chief minister Devendra Fadnavis.
Currently, the approximately 21,000 employees from over 1,500 schools are paid their salaries through Union Bank of India, a nationalised bank, which Tuesday’s order has sought to change. ‘Government decision regarding the payment of salary to teaching and non-teaching staff through Union Bank of India has been revoked and the approval has given to open salary account in Mumbai Bank,’ (sic) states the order. Teachers’ organisations have opposed the order and threatened to launch protests against the decision.
The Mumbai District Cooperative Bank, better known as the Mumbai Bank, was embroiled in controversy two years ago after media reports questioned Darekar’s election to the bank’s board from the Workers’ Society quota. The MLC was forced to retreat but after a year, again took over as chairman of the bank.
In 2018, after teachers registered a strong protest about not getting their salaries on time through Mumbai Bank, the government decided to transfer all salary accounts to the nationalised Union Bank of India. The annual salaries of the teaching and non-teaching staff of Mumbai schools amount to approximately ₹110 crore.
This November, the government changed the eligibility criteria for cooperative banks to enable them to get banking business from the government. On December 1, the finance department issued an order amending the list of banks eligible to hold salary accounts of government and semi-government employees, and included Mumbai Bank in the list. The buzz in political and administrative circles was that the eligibility criteria had been changed in order to favour Mumbai Bank.
The government’s new order has teachers and their unions up in arms. “In 2018, after the teachers’ agitation, the government was forced to retract its decision of keeping salary accounts with Mumbai Bank, and had to shift these to Union Bank,” said J M Abhyankar, president of the Maharashtra State Shikshak Sena, which had challenged the decision right up to the Supreme Court and won. “The government’s fresh decision to go back to Mumbai Bank is contempt of the Supreme Court order.” Abhyankar warned the government that if it did not cancel its GR, the Shikshak Sena would start an agitation.
Shikshak Bharti, another teacher’s union, also opposed the GR. “We fought right up to the SC in order to get regular and secure salaries for Mumbai principals, teachers and non-teaching staff,” said Subhas Mora, president of Shikshak Bharti. “The government should have consulted teachers before deciding which bank to open salary accounts in.” The union will decide on the further course of action on December 9 in a Shikshak Nirdhar Mela.
When contacted, Praveen Darekar said that the government had taken a decision on the basis of the bank’s financial capacity. “A couple of months ago, we held a meeting with MLA Kapil Patil and his colleagues from the teachers’ constituency and explained to them how Mumbai Bank could give them all the services that the nationalised bank does.,” he said. “Later, on the basis of our financial capacity, the state government included our bank in the list of eligible banks. We have been selected based on that decision so there’s nothing wrong in it. If teachers’ organisations have some more doubts, we are willing to clear them.”