The Assam government on Tuesday said it will abolish 8,000 vacant posts of permanent school teachers as a larger number of contractual faculty members are already working through the Sarba Siksha Abhiyan (SSA).

Education Minister Ranoj Pegu said that the state government in 2020 had offered a regular pay scale and other benefits such as service tenure up to 60 years of age to 11,206 contractual teachers working under the SSA in Lower Primary and Upper Primary schools.

“In order to maintain rationality against this near-regularisation, the Govt. decided to keep 8000 sanctioned posts of regular teachers vacant to avoid duplicity and financial neutrality,” he said in a Facebook post.

The education minister said that as these vacant posts have been kept frozen and shall be vacant for a long period till the retirement of the contractual teachers, the government has considered it “prudent to abolish them for financial discipline”.

He, however, said that the state government may create posts as and when required owing to an increase in enrolment in the future.

Have a story to share? Email us [email protected]