The Pay Scale Crisis in Bangladesh

In current Bangladesh, the most important issue in electronic media and dailies is new pay scale and the movement of public university teachers against it. In this pay scale, public university Teachers found them in such position which is not prestigious for them. They termed their movement as “Movement for Status”. In some phases, they have already done several activities as part of their movement, but government is still not paying enough positive attention to the movement.

Recently, the teachers felt that until they go through hard line the demand will not be achieved; therefore, they called a strike stopping all academic activities. This decision made students worried about their classes, examinations and so on. Ultimately, it is being the big deal to create a session jam. Government is requesting teachers not to take any baneful step which can create session jam and harm students. On the contrary, teachers are blaming government and its controversial policy about the pay scale. If we look into the matter deeply, we will have some important issues which need to be explained.

Firstly, according to the teachers, the new pay scale profoundly created discrimination between them and bureaucrats. Socially, teachers are honored by all classes and considered as the builder of the nation, even the bureaucrats are also a ‘product’ of these teachers as they claimed. Teachers are claiming that they never think bureaucrats as their competent; rather they are trying to get intrinsic pay scale for them in order to establish their prestige formally.

Then, it is also important to pay attention to the economic status of a public university teacher. Most of the teachers living in Dhaka city are always in an economic crisis which make them teach in a private university as an additional earning source. Although it is an allegation against them that they are spending time in private university and earning extra money instead of paying enough attention to own university, it is not a strong complaint because life in Dhaka city is highly expensive and their salary is not enough to lead even a medium life; therefore, they often have no way without working in another place. As they were never concerned about money, their economic condition was not the issue of discussion, but today it is another tenable question that needs to be solved. Besides being busy with study, many teachers are fighting against an ambivalent economic condition that is totally unthinkable for a bureaucrat. But teachers never raised their voice against this discrimination as they were not concerned about it. Moreover, a teacher has to work most of the time of a day where a bureaucrat works for 8 hours a day. However, it is totally untenable to compare between teachers and bureaucrats.

Finally, the humiliation of teachers is very harmful to the education system. If the policies of government keep going against teachers and abasing them, no good and qualified student will dream to be teacher in future. It will beget many crises in building strong and balanced education system of the country.

The people of Bangladesh always think teachers as an honorable category in the society. They would never like to see any politics with teachers. The government should get the people’s pulse and take decisions based on their consent.