Pema Khandu Cabinet
Arunachal Pradesh chief minister Pema Khandu during a Cabinet meeting in Itanagar. File Image credit - Northeast Now

The Arunachal Pradesh Cabinet on Friday approved two important policies – one that will help rationalize transfer and posting of teachers serving under the state government and the other to boost the industrial sector of the state.

Arunachal Pradesh has 3513 government schools including 211 community schools and approximately 16594 regular teachers.

Due to want of robust state policy, the department was facing difficulties to rationalize the posting of teachers in a transparent manner.

Hence the Arunachal Pradesh Teachers’ Transfer & Posting Policy 2020 has been approved to ensure the need-based distribution of teachers to protect the academic interest of students and optimize job satisfaction amongst the teachers in a free and transparent manner.

Under the new policy, all government schools will be divided into three categories – hard, middle and soft.

All new recruits will be initially posted in hard posting for a mandatory period of 3 years including probationary posting and subsequently in middle posting for 5 years.

All general transfer of teachers will be made in the month of April/May through the online process. All applications for transfer of requests shall be made online and should be forwarded to controlling authority in a time-bound manner.

The State Cabinet headed by chief minister Pema Khandu also approved the Arunachal Pradesh State Industrial and Investment Policy 2019.

The policy is aimed at leveraging the huge potential for industrial growth in Arunachal along with providing employment opportunities to the local youths through incentives in identified thrust areas like tourism, food processing, and agro-based industries, textiles and handicrafts, agri-horti processing sector and hydropower.

The state government will set up a single-window system to facilitate all clearances/approvals/licenses/permissions for setting up industries with the aim to create a conducive business environment to aid investment.

The various incentives provided by the policy include state capital investment subsidy for all new industrial units in manufacturing and service sectors at the rate of 30% on the cost of investment in plant and machinery and SGST exemption in terms of tax reimbursement as per the slabs.

Further, the state government will provide various kinds of subsidies like state interest subsidy on term loan from the bank on plant and machinery and working capital loan, power subsidy, stamp duty and registration fee reimbursement, transport subsidy, quality, and ZED certification and supporting marketing and promotion.

The policy also promotes ‘Make-in-Arunachal’ which entails that state government and other state-controlled agencies to give preference to enterprises registered in the state while purchasing the manufactured products.

Damien Lepcha is Northeast Now Correspondent in Arunachal Pradesh. He can be reached at: [email protected]