Guardians chipping in for teachers’ salary

Dhankuta, November 19

Falling short on fund, a school in Dhankuta’s Chaubise Rural Municipality-2 has been paying its teachers by collecting donations from parents and guardians.

Dharapani Basic School of Mudhebas has a total of eight teachers, including school Principal Kailash Dhungana. While four of them are on contract-basis, others were arranged on the provision that the school itself would manage their salary. Though the school has five positions for government teachers, only one — i.e. the principal — is at work here now.

“As the government doesn’t fund the salary of teachers managed locally, we had to ask the students’ parents and guardians to chip in,” Dhungana said, adding that each guardian or parent was contributing Rs 2,300 to the school every four months.

According to the principal, donation is being collected since the academic session of 2071. “We don’t only collect donation from parents and guardians but also hold programmes occasionally to manage fund,” said the principal, informing a joint Deusi-Bhailo team of students and their guardians, parents and teachers raked in 157,000 rupees this year.

School Management Committee Chairperson Bhawani Limbu said they were planning to set up an unexpendable fund from the amount collected from students’ parents and guardians and other programmes. “Once we’ve enough sum in the fund, we will pay salary from the interest accrued from the balance,” said Limbu.