NC grieves of disparity against teachers in tourism allowance

KATHMANDU, June 14: Nepali Congress (NC) Central Education Department has drawn the attention of the government towards the discrimination between teachers and government employees when it comes to tourism allowance and other provisions announced in the budget speech on May 29.

Minister for Finance Bishnu Poudel, unveiling the budget for the fiscal year 2021/22, announced the government had decided to provide 10 days leave including travel expenses (tourism allowance) to the government employees, corporation’s employees and Academy’s employees among others from the upcoming fiscal year. 

The government also encouraged the private sector to follow the suit as a scheme to promote domestic tourism.

Other schemes included group insurance worth Rs 1 million for the government employees and Rs 100,000 as the health insurance premium.

NC central office secretary Dr Krishna Prasad Poudel, issuing a press statement here today, urged the government not to give encouragement to such discriminatory treatment.

The government had appropriated a budget of Rs 180.4 billion out of the Rs 1.64 trillion budget for the education sector for the new fiscal year 2021/22. 

Although many new measures have been proposed under the President Education Reform Programme to enhance education quality and improve physical infrastructures in the community schools and university, no significant schemes such as motivational allowance, tourism allowance among others for the teachers and staffers in the community schools and in the universities have been announced. 

The government has, however, announced to raise the remuneration of the child development teachers and school staffs to minimum Rs 15,000.

Poudel has also appealed to the government to put an end to such disparity and the trend to address demands through demonstration.