Shillong: The Meghalaya cabinet on Tuesday approved a proposal to regularise services of 2,447 lower primary school teachers in government schools, Chief Minister Conrad K Sangma said.

“We have decided to regularise 2,447 teachers and now they will receive benefits as regular employees,” he said, adding that this has been a long-standing demand of the teachers.

The chief minister said when the state government had taken over the lower primary schools in 1993, a large number of teachers had been shifted to the government and they became regular government employees.

However, 2,447 teachers were left out in the process due to which they were not getting pensions and other benefits.

“This has happened for many reasons and I don’t want to go into details of that,” he said.

When the state government took over 2,568 schools of the district councils at that point in time, 136 schools were left out and not taken over by the state government, he said.

Meanwhile, the cabinet has also approved a proposal for grouping of posts carrying the same scale of pay with similar qualifications in one advertisement.

Previously, Meghalaya Public Service Commission would conduct different examinations and the selection processes were time-consuming affairs.

“Instead of having different exams for departments, the MPSC will club exams in one go and tests will be held together,” he said.