I am a Meghalaya SSA teacher and this is my sorry plight!

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Date: August 14,2018

To 

The Editor

TNT- The Northeast Today

Respected Sir/Madam,

My journey as an SSA teacher in Meghalaya has been quite a dilemma . But I love my job as I love my family. Imparting knowledge and receiving the same amount of knowledge I have been doing and I consider myself to be still on a learning quest. As I enter my class, I don't see myself as a teacher but I see myself as a father figure to gain and give moral values to my children.

So often, I have heard people say that teaching is an easy task, anyone can be a teacher if applied for a teacher in school or any institution and earn easily. Is that really easy as it seems from the outside? Well I can't change someone's point of view about certain profession. I would rather say that each and every profession has its own "Modus-Operandi".

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Let me put it my way, the profession which I have chosen is more 'baby-sitting', where I spend hours with thousands of children. My responsibility and priority increases manifold when I sit with them and when I have to make each and every one of them understand and learn. Like every finger in our hand is not the same, similarly every student's way of understanding and grabbing things differs. But my duty is to make the children educated rather than just literate.

Apart from being teacher I am also a father, a husband, a son and a friend and also the only sole earner in my family. How am I doing? What is my part in my family? Are the questions which arises as month passes by. Earlier, before election I was told by a candidate that he would tackle SSA-teachers' pending Salaries" and in a hope that at least he cares, I, and many like me voted for him and he fortunate or unfortunately won the elections.

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As months pass by, the situation remains the same, I am still empty-pocket, the only thing remaining with me is the debt from my relatives, neighbour and my friends. Day seems restless and night seems undending but do I have any other choice? Not being able to pay for my daughter's school fees, not being able to fill the empty vessels and jars. Sometimes it pushes my limits, slits my passion and my career but do I have a choice?

With humble request to the state government: Respected Sir/Madam, please understand that before being a teacher I am a human being so please kindly consider my request and let each teacher like me live in peace with enough and timely income to feed me and my family.

An aggrieved teacher hoping against hopes 

Featured image courtesy: All Meghalaya SSA School Teachers' Association – Ribhoi District Unit


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