The online application process for inclusion of non-government educational institutions under the Monthly Pay Order system will begin on August 5, according to an education ministry circular released on Wednesday.
The window of application for MPO facilities under which the government pays teachers’ basic salaries will be closed on August 20, said the Secondary and Higher Education Division circular signed by its deputy secretary Kamrul Hasan.
The circular said that educational institutions will need to submit online applications available at the division’s web site www.shed.gov.bd, Directorate of Secondary and Higher Education web site www.dshe.gov.bd and Bangladesh Bureau of Educational Information and Statistics web site www.banbeis.gov.bd.
No handwritten application will be allowed, the circular said. It also said that the MPO inclusion process would be digital and the list of eligible educational institutions would be based on some indicators.
The education ministry constituted two committees on June 19 for selecting educational institutions for MPO inclusion amid teachers’ protests.
The ministry constituted a technical committee for selecting the education institutions using software. It constituted a general committee for receiving the technical committee’s proposals.
Thousands of teachers took to the streets several times in recent years to press for their inclusion into MPO system and nationalisation of many schools and colleges. Their latest round of movement was postponed on July 11.
On June 10, the teachers aggrieved over finance minister AMA Muhith keeping mum about the MPO issue in his budget speech, resumed their demonstrations.
Muhith shocked the teachers by omitting the issue in his budget presentation as prime minister Sheikh Hasina assured them in January of providing MPO benefits to their institutions from the next fiscal.
About 80,000 teachers of 5,000 non-government schools, colleges and technical institutions are now deprived of the MPO benefits, some of them for over a decade.
In 2010, the government provided MPO benefits to 1,624 institutions.
