Representatives of protesting primary school teachers are in a meeting with officials from the Ministry of Finance and the Ministry of Primary and Mass Education at the Secretariat.
Teacher leaders at the Central Shaheed Minar in Dhaka have confirmed the matter to TIMES of Bangladesh.
At 6:30pm on Sunday, a nine-member delegation, including Abul Kashem, Shamsuddin Masud and Mahbubur Rahman, began talks with officials from both ministries.
Earlier in the afternoon, Bangladesh Primary School Assistant Teachers Association President Md Shamsuddin Masud told TIMES of Bangladesh that a meeting with ministry representatives had been proposed for the night.
“If our demands are met, teachers will return to classrooms. Otherwise, the sit-in and class suspension will continue,” he said.
On Sunday afternoon, assistant teachers from government primary schools held a protest rally at the Central Shaheed Minar, covering their faces with black cloth to protest what they described as police assaults and discriminatory administrative conduct.
From the rally, they announced that classroom teaching and the sit-in programme would continue until their three demands were met, including placement in the 10th pay grade.
Teachers began the sit-in at Shaheed Minar on Saturday, initially under a joint platform formed by four organisations called the Prathomik Shikkhok Dabi Bastobayon Parishad. By Sunday afternoon, 15 teachers’ organisations had joined the movement.
Alongside the second-day sit-in in Dhaka, teachers across the country observed a work stoppage for the first day at their respective schools.
The agitation began on Friday night when teachers gathered at Shaheed Minar to press for three key demands — 10th-grade salary status, higher grade promotion in the 10th and 16th years of service and 100% departmental promotion.
The Directorate of Primary Education has said a proposal to upgrade assistant teachers from the 13th to the 11th grade has already been recommended and is under process.
At the start of the movement, teachers said they would end the protest if the 11th-grade gazette was issued.
However, following a baton charge by police in Shahbagh on Saturday that left several teachers injured, they hardened their stance, declaring they would not return to classrooms without an official notification placing them in the 10th grade.
