In an inspiring move, Praveen Prakash, the education secretary in Andhra Pradesh, has offered to not take his monthly salary till the dues of nearly 1.35 lakh cooks and ayahs employed in schools are credited to their accounts each month.
News18 has a copy of a letter written by Prakash, an IAS officer of the 1994 batch, to the Drawing and Disbursing Officer, government of Andhra Pradesh, on March 10.
“Under no circumstance, you should process the bill of my salary without getting the compliance report from me, stating that the salaries of 88,296 cooks and 46,661 ayahs have been credited to their account. This practice will come into effect from this month, i.e., from March salary, which is due to me in April. I will only draw the salary after the Ayahs and Cooks salary has been duly paid,” Prakash said in his letter.
Schemes in Andhra Schools
Apart from teaching, two other important aspects in Andhra Pradesh schools are providing good infrastructure in the form of toilets and mid-day meals. The ayahs maintain the toilets while the cooks prepare the mid-day meals. “The Ayahs and Cooks are the backbone pieces of the two pillars of School Education, i.e., Nutrition and Infrastructure,” Prakash has written.
The improvement of infrastructure in schools has been undertaken under the Nadu Nedu programme, whose Phase-1 has been completed, covering 15,715 schools with an expense of Rs 3,669 crore. In Phase-2, work with an approximate value of Rs 10,000 crore is under progress in 22,344 schools.
For providing mid-day meals to the school students, the Gorumudda Programme was launched where, as compared to the national norm, almost 200 per cent extra money is being spent by the Andhra Pradesh government to give quality, nutritious and variety of food for the students, the letter says.
Under the Nadu Nedu programme, apart from many other components, major highlights are toilets for boy and girl students in schools. For maintaining these toilets, a total of 46,661 ayahs have been appointed, while a total of 88,296 cooks have been appointed for the 44,392 schools of Andhra Pradesh to provide hot and nutritious meal to the students.
The Problem
Prakash’s letter says that for ensuring that there is a transparent and fast method of providing the honorarium, the government has designed a system by which the bill amount gets automatically credited to the beneficiary’s account after the processing is complete.
“The preparation of the monthly bill has also been automated which like any good system has the Maker, Checker and Approver modules in-place. Under this concept following steps have to be followed — Concerned teacher in the school report to HM (Headmaster) about the Number of days, Ayahs and Cooks, are attending the school, Headmasters forward the report in Automated system to Mandal Education office (MEO) who compiles the data at Mandal level for initial compilation and checking and they send it to the District Education Officer (DEO),” the letter says.
At the district level, the DEO does the compilation after checking and sends the data to the Directorate. The Director then checks and uploads the bills for payment of honorarium.
“The Government from time-to-time has prescribed timelines for the uploading of the bills at each level (at school level, mandal level, district level). In this chain, if at any level the timeline is not followed, it results in non-payment of timely honorarium to Cooks and Ayahs. As the system is robust, so when there is delay in updating of the bill at any one level, it results in delay of payment for 30 days,” Prakash has written.
The letter says sensitization at all levels (schools, mandal, district etc.) needs to be done to ensure that all the ayahs and cooks get salary in similar format as government employees.
“I have asked the Director MDM to submit the monthly report incorporating — Whether all the Ayahs and Cooks have received salary or not. Every month I will forward the Compliance report to you, after the receipt of the letter of Director MDM. Please process the bill for the payment of my salary of each month, only after the payment of the salary of all the Ayahs and Cooks is completed for that month,” the letter says.
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