Patna,(BiharTimes): In a significant pre-election move the Bihar cabinet on Thursday declared pay-scale based salary for its over four lakh contractual teachers and librarians and raised the retirement age of doctors working in the state from 65 to 67 years.

According to the Cabinet Coordination Department Principal Secretary Shishir Kumar Sinha the state cabinet approved Rs 5,200- 20,200 payscale for trained and untrained primary, middle, high and higher secondary teachers as well as librarians working in state government schools on contract. It will be implemented with retrospective affect of July 1, 2015.

The state government will bear an additional financial burden of Rs 2,948.49 crore for this purpose. The total amount to be spent on the salary of teachers and librarians would now be over Rs 7,952 crore.

Besides, all these para-teachers, both trained and untrained, and librarians would be covered under UTI Retirement Benefit Pension Fund, in which the government's contribution would be Rs 200 per month.

They would be entitled to get three per cent of their basic salary as yearly increment.

A high-level committee has been set up to decide their service conditions, rules, promotion policy, disciplinary action, in-service training, interschool transfers etc. The Education Department Principal Secretary R K Mahajan has been made the member-secretary of the committee. It would submit its report to the government within three months.

The other members of the committee would be additional advocate general Lalit Kishore, secretaries/principal secretaries of finance, panchayati raj, urban development and general administration departments.

According to an estimate the teachers falling under various categories will now get a salary anywhere between Rs 12,000 and 19,000.

These four lakh teachers had been on warpath to press their demand for regularization of their service.
The trained primary teachers, secondary and higher secondary teachers, librarians will be given a grade pay ranging between Rs 2,000 and Rs 2,800. On the other hand the untrained teachers and librarians will be provided a chance of attending two-year training courses with full pay.

Similarly, the retirement age of allopathic, homeopathic, ayurvedic doctors of the state government have been raised to 67 years. A few montsh back chief minister Nitish Kumar, while attending a function at Nalanda Medical College and Hospital, assured that the retirement age of the doctors would be raised to 70.

In all 36 agenda came up at the cabinet meeting, which condoled the death of former President Dr A P J Abdul Kalam.