Govt to resume retirement benefit payments for teachers: Education minister

The government will resume payment of retirement benefits for teachers who have not received allowances under the Teacher Welfare Trust since 2022, Education Minister ANM Ehsanul Hoque Milon said today.

He made the announcement while talking to reporters at the Secretariat after a meeting with the prime minister.

Milon said the government has made a Tk 2,000 crore block allocation to pay teachers’ retirement benefits. “We plan to start the process within the next one month,” he said.

The minister claimed that several thousand crores of taka had been embezzled from the Teacher Welfare Trust in the past, creating complications in disbursing the benefits.

The new allocation will be used to pay the teachers who have been deprived of their retirement benefits, he added.

Milon also said the education budget for the next fiscal year is the highest so far, standing at Tk 1.23 lakh crore. The allocation is equivalent to two percent of Bangladesh's GDP.

He said the prime minister has assured that the allocation for education would be increased gradually to five percent of GDP.