REPORT OF THE CABE COMMITTEE ON HOUSING FACILITIES FOR WOMEN TEACHERS

 REPORT OF THE CABE COMMITTEE ON
 HOUSING FACILITIES FOR WOMEN
 TEACHERS

Introduction

1. In order to examine the question of housing facilities for women teachers and to prepare concrete proposals for action and implementation in this regard, the Union Minister of Human Resource Development vide order No. F.2-1/87-PN 2 dated May 4, 1987 appointed a CABE Sub-Committee under the Chairmanship of Shri K. R. Narayanan, Union Minister of State for Science and Technology, Government of India. The terms of reference of the sub-committee were as under.

a) To evolve suitable norms and make suggestions for giving some special facilities and making efforts for affording housing facilities for women teachers.

b) In evolving such norms, the Committee shall take into account the National Policy on Education and also the recommendations made in the Programme of Action particularly in respect of teachers.

c) The Committee will lay down its own procedures and may co-opt members, as may be considered necessary, to evolve a suitable policy for provision of housing facilities for women teachers in consultation with teachers' representatives and organisations.

2. The list of members of the Committee and the persons who attended its various meetings is given in Annexure-I of this report.

3. The first meeting of the Committee was held on 19-2-1988 in which it was suggested that some basic statistics on teachers and information about the nature and the magnitude of the problem should be collected from various districts before embarking upon any programme or suggestions for providing housing facilities to women teachers. As no information on this subject was available from any official or non-official source NIEPA was requested to conduct a quick survey on sample basis to study the magitude and nature of the-problem of housing facilities for women teachers in different types of schools.

4. In the second meeting of the Committee held on July 21, 1988 the report of the survey conducted by NIEPA provided the basis for detailed discussion. In this meeting, in addition to members of the committee, representatives of some of the housing finance institutions and concerned Ministries/Organisations and Agencies also participated.

Background

5. The problem of providing residential accommodation to women teachers particularly in rural areas has been engaging the attention of educational planners and administrators especially after the First Five Year Plan.

6. The National Committee on Women's Education (1959) also considered this problem at length and observed that "one of the main difficulties experienced by women teachers in rural areas is the lack of suitable accommodation". This Committee recommended that adequate provision should be made in the Third Plan for providing women teachers with quarters, as far as possible, near the school. As the accommodation difficulty is experienced by women personnel engaged in other developmental activities also, this Committee suggested that as far as possible quarters for women teachers, Gram Sevikas, Women Social Education Organisers, Mukhya Sevikas may be combined or be provided in close proximity. It suggested that hostels should be started for women teachers and other women workers in central places where from they would be able to go to schools in neighbouring villagers during the day and return to the hostels in evening. These arrangements the committee assumed, would add to the sense of personal security among the women.

7. The Education Commission (1964-66) also considered the problem of providing residential accommodation to teachers and recommended that every effort should be made to increase residential facilities for teachers in rural areas. It suggested that this should be regarded as a responsibility of the local community to provide such accommodation". It also noted that wherever necessary and possible, State subsidies should be given for this programme. In urban areas and particularly in big cities, this problem is sometimes easier and sometimes more difficult than in villages. A programme of building,construction and grant of adequate house rent allowance to enable teachers to obtain decent housing facilities is needed Cooperative housing schemes

for teachers should be encouraged and loans for construction of house should be made available on favourable terms% The Education Commission further recommended that "residential accommodation should be provided for women teachers, particularly in rural areas, on priority basis".

8. Special emphasis has also been laid on this aspect in the Programme of Action (POA) for the National Policy on Education, 1986, In POA (Chapter XXIV Para 8(d)X it has been mentioned that "special measures will be taken to provide housing facilities for the teachers in urban as well as in rural areas. In addition to budgetary resource funds from various corporations and housing agencies will be attracted for this purpose. Variety of financial resource will be used for construction of houses in desert, hilly, tribal and remote rural areas".

9. The Government of India had introduced a scheme in the second Five Year Plan for providing free accommodation to women teachers working in rural. areas-as a part of its Centrally Sponsored Programme to accelerate the enrolment of girls In primary schools. Simultaneously, the programme was directed to increase the number of women teachers especially in rural areas. The main objective of this scheme of construction of quarters for women teachers in the village of their posting was to overcome their reluctance to serve in rural areas by providing them safer accommodation under this programme Central Assistance for construction of houses was given to state governments to the extent of 75 per cent of the approved expenditure but it was not obligatory on states' part to contribute their quota of 25 per cent.

10. The Programme Evaluation Organisation of the Planning Commission undertook An evaluation of this scheme in 1974 According to the report of the evaluation, the housing programme was taken up in all-the states (except Haryana, Maharashtara and punjab) at some stage or the other and the number of quarters/hostels constructed for women teachers was 2835 in Second Plan, 10, 277 in Third Plan and 201 under Annual Plans.

11. It was observed in course of the study that there was no standard criteria followed in allotment of funds under this scheme. However, general considerations for selection of area for construction of quarters were availability of free land, educational backwardness of the area and preference for rural areas where women teachers could not get suitable residential accommodation. The construction work of these quarters was undertaken by agencies like school managing committees, Zilla parishads, panchayat samitis/block samiti and Public Works Department. The Public Works, Department executed the schemes mainly in respect of government institutions. Other works were executed under its close supervision.

12. The evaluation study revealed that the quarters constructed under this scheme were mostly unoccupied or occupied by male teachers or used as additional classrooms or occupied by block staff or were in custody of some other departments and institutions.

Following were the main reasons of the failure of the scheme:

i) In most of the cases quarters were constructed far away from schools and/or main habitations of the villages because these were constructed on sites donated by villagers which were not conveniently situated. Women teachers were, therefore reluctant to occupy them.

ii) Women teachers also did not prefer this accommodation because they had to pay 10% of their basic pay while relatively cheaper accommodation was available in some rural areas.

iii) Some women teachers even prefered to stay in nearby towns inspite of unreliable transport facilities and long distances.

13. This centrally sponsored scheme was discontinued during the Fourth Five Year Plans.

14. At present there is no information readily available on any housing scheme especially meant for woman teachers in various States/Union Territories. However, there is a continuing Scheme of Assistance for Constitutions/Expansion of Hostel Building for Working Women with a Day-Care Centre of the Department of Women and Child Development of the Government of India. The scheme is meant to provide hostel facilities to working

Women in cities, smaller towns and also in selected rural areas.

The main objectives of this scheme are:

a) to provide accommodation for single working women widows, divorcee, separated married but temporarily living alone; and

b) to provide accommodation to women who are being trained for employment provided the training period does not exceed one year. (This facility is not extended to regular students).

15. Under this scheme, Women Development Corporations, Universities, Schools/ colleges of Social Work, voluntary agencies/public trusts working in the field of woman's welfare/social welfare/ women's education are eligible for assistance. Subject to certain conditions, local bodies and Co-operative institutions are also eligible for assistance under this scheme.

Nature and Magnitude of the Problem

17. The Committee has not boon able to undertake an in-depth study of the nature and magnitude of the problem for providing housing facilities to women teachers as no data are available from any source on ownership status or arrangements for residential accommodation for women teachers in different typos of schools in various states/UTS. The Committee felt that it would have been better if precise, dimensions of the problem were known. At the request of this committee, the National Institute of Educational Planning and Administration (NIEPA), managed to make, in a very short period, a reasonably good survey of the housing facilities for women teachers in four states namely, Haryana, West Bengal,, Orissa and Tamil Nadu. As the findings of this survey are based on a very small sample, it would not be appropriate to generalize them. Some of the findings of this survey are however as under:

i) Most of the women teachers stay in their own accommodation i.e. 45% in Haryana, 67% in Tamil Nadu and 48% in Orissa.

ii) The magnitude of the problem of providing housing facilities to women teachers is almost same in all types of schools i,e, primary, middle, secondary and higher secondary.

iii) In none of the states' where 'survey' was conducted women teachers are provided accommodation by the Education Department. However, in some of the States a very small percentage of women teachers has been provided accommodation by departments other than education,

iv) In all the state, in which survey was conducted, there is a provision for payment of house rent allowance to teachers including women teachers. In rural areas, it is paid in the form of Rural Incentive Allowance.

v) There is no special scheme for providing housing facilities to women teachers in any of the state in which survey was conducted. However, during the 7th Five Year Plan. Haryana started a Plan schema for construction of Residantial Quarters for teachers in urban and-rural areas. At the time of allotment woman teachers would be given priority. In some of the other states, where government quarters are available allotment is made on seniority or station seniority basis if there is a central pool. The position in Orissa is that in some of the girls high schools a few quarters like one for headmistress and one or two for women teachers are provided. In Tamil Nadu, a schema for providing housing facilities to women teachers for elementary schools was started in 1964 but was discontinued in 1985-86. In some of the blocks where survey was conducted, it was found that out of 10 quarters constructed under this schema, none was occupied by women teachers.

vi) The magnitude of the problem is very high in rural and backward areas as women teachers do not want to shift alongwith their families established at one place due to some of the following reasons. a) Education problems of children;

b) Lack of suitable and adequate facilities like water, electricity, medical, marketing etc;

c) Lack of suitable accommodation especially in villages;

d) Lack of social security particularly for single lady teachers; etc.

vii) Sometimes women teachers do not avail of facilities of departmental quarters because of the following reasons :

a) The amount deducted on account of house rent from their pay package and amount foregone on account of stoppage of HRA is sometimes much more than the rental value of similar typo of private accommodation available in the locality;

b) Generally, there is lack of security arrangements as the quarters are generally constructed away from central localities;

c) Most of such quarters are single quarters and social interaction is missing; etc.

viii) On the issue of mobilisation of community resources, it has been found that where as local people are ready to contribute liberally for the school buildings and school programmes Out for teacher quarters, their response is very poor.

ix) Some of the states have also made efforts to over- come the problem of-providing residential accommodation to teachers by rationalisation of their policy on postings and transfers of teachers particularly in case of women. Once the lady teacher are ensured that they would not be normally transferred they make their own arrangements for accommodation on long-term basis.

Recommendations.

The Committee, after taking into consideration the magnitude and various dimensions of the problem and also the efforts made in the past, came to the conclusion that no single formulation could appropriately redress the problem of housing facilities for women teachers which varied from region to region and in many cases from- School to school. What is required is to adopt a multi-pronged approach involving different solutions in accordance with needs and requirements of different areas. Though certain guidelines can be provided at the national or State level, this problem needs to be tackled at local levels. Moreover, this problem is not peculiar to women teachers but all women employees working in other departments of government and local bodies. Accordingly, the Committee makes the following recommendations:

1. The problem of providing housing facilities to rural teachers including women teachers)- is too-massive to be fully solved within the foreseeable future. Since teacher absenteeism plays havoc with education in rural areas,, the Committee recommends above all, that the following steps should be taken, to mitigate the problem, as has also been envisaged in sub-paras (a),(b),(c),(d) and (e) of para 13 of chapter XXIII of the POA:-

(i) Teachers wishing to be posted to Particular villages should, as a matter of course and on a long- term basis, be posted in schools located in such villages unless this is not desirable in public interest. With such a policy, it is presumed that teachers would opt for serving in the Villages they come from or where they may otherwise have an interest such as property, relations, etc. In all such cases teachers would servo willingly and would not normally face a housing problem. If implemented on a nationwide scale this policy would subtantially reduce the problem of housing for rural teachers.

(ii) In admissions to, teacher education institutions, appropriate weightage may be given to candidates hailing from rural areas so that they do not, as a matter of course, expect to be posted in urban areas when appointed as teachers,

(iii) For very remote villages a programme of appointing 'local' youth and women (including, if necessary, somewhat under-qualified persons) as teachers may be undertaken on the lines of the Shiksha Karmi Project being implemented in Rajasthan. This would, of course, require facilities for intensive training and academic support to be created in the interest of maintenance of quality and the programme can expand only in a gradual fashion.

2. In the subsequent paragraphs, certain steps are being recommended for adding to the stock of houses available for women teachers especially in rural areas. However, all such stops taken together, would also solve only a part of the problem as it would remain after implementation of Recommendation 1 (particularly (i) above. The committee also therefore feels that there is no alternative to generating a climate where the rural community takes the responsibility of genuinely helping an outsider teacher to got the best possible accommodation, looking to local circumstances. Village Education Committees, gram Panchayats and Parent-Teacher Associations are the bodies which should be effectively used for this purpose.

3. The Committee suggests that in rural areas, Cluster Approach should be followed as experience has shown that separate quarters for women teachers are not preferred by the target group due to lack of security and other Support Services, It is suggested that a complex of about 5 to 10 residential quarters should be developed at a nodal point for every Panchayat or group of small Panchayats for women employees of education as well as other departments having village level workers. Their