The University Teachers Association of Bangladesh (UTAB) placed a 12-point demand, including the introduction of a 'balanced and dignified' pay structure for teachers at all levels of education.
The demands were placed at a press conference in Dhaka University on Sunday on the occasion of the World Teachers Day (5 October).
UTAB President and Vice Chancellor (VC) of Bangladesh Open University, Professor Dr A B M Obaidul Islam, read out a written statement at the event.
Among others, UTAB General Secretary Professor Dr Morshed Hasan Khan, Treasurer Professor Abul Kalam Sarkar, Jahangirnagar University VC Professor Kamrul Ahsan, and National University Pro-VC Professor Lutfar Rahman were present at the press conference.
The UTAB leaders placed 12 demands, including implementation of a 'balanced and dignified' pay structure for the teachers at all levels, ensuring a transparent and modern promotion system, expanding trainings of international standards, research, and digital skill development opportunities, reducing teachers' administrative burden to focus on teaching and research, introducing a universal pension scheme for all non-government teachers, ensuring prompt payment of retirement benefits, creating a separate and higher pay-scale for university teachers aligned with international standards, providing research allowances in line with global benchmarks, ensuring funding opportunities for teachers to attend at least one national and one international academic conference each year with travel and research grants, offering special incentives for publication in recognised journals and producing high quality research books, ensuring job security, fair pay, and research opportunities for teachers at private universities, promoting academic freedom, establishing an education- and research-friendly environment at all universities, and taking governmental and social initiatives to enhance teachers' respect, social status, and workplace security.
The UTAB president said this year, the Teachers Day's theme - "The Teachers We Need for the Education We Want: The Global Imperative to Reverse the Teacher Shortage" - highlights the need to uphold the dignity and professional rights of teachers worldwide. However, in Bangladesh, teachers from primary to university levels continue to face professional undervaluation and financial hardship.
He noted that the primary and secondary school teachers remain stuck in lower grades of the National Pay Scale.
He also pointed out that the teachers at non-government secondary and higher secondary institutions face extreme discrimination compared to their government counterparts in terms of salaries and benefits. The teachers live in financial insecurity, as no universal pension scheme has been introduced for them.
Professor Obaidul Islam added that the teachers working in non-government colleges under the National University that offer Honours and Masters programmes have not been included under the MPO (Monthly Pay Order) system.
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