Temporary junior lecturers seek redressal of grievances in Tirupati

Tirupati: Over 4,000 junior lecturers working in junior colleges on temporary basis have pinned their hopes on the recently appointed School Education Regulatory and Monitoring Commission for solution to their problems.

There are 447 government junior colleges in the State in which a little over 1,600 regular teaching staff out of the sanctioned posts of 5,562 has been working. Nearly four times to the number of the staff have been employed on temporary basis under various categories.

These lecturers have continued to protest for years that they are meted out severe injustice. They are angry that the successive government have failed to show any interest to address their problems. As there was no recruitment in junior colleges for more than 10 years, about 3,700 contract lecturers, 1,100 guest faculty, 350 minimum time scale (MTS) lecturers have been working in the junior colleges.

Even these contract faculty were not recruited since 2013. In many junior colleges only one regular faculty is existing, and all others are contract staff. There are some colleges which have no regular faculty at all.

The most worrying aspect is that the guest teaching was not paid monthly salaries of Rs 10,000 for the last two years. They have been working with a hope of getting all arrears and that they will get regularised.

The MTS lecturers have also been seeking regularisation of their services. They have been saying that some faculty members have submitted fake certificates of service and became permanent employees.

Others are saying that they have been working for many years with minimum time scale under which only basic and DA are paid. The government denied benefits of the Pay Revision Commission. They do not get HRA, increments etc, though they perform all duties, including confidential work.

One MTS lecturer Dr K P Jayakumar said that some staff members had retired, and some were no more. Many others are on verge of superannuation. They were all seeking regularisation of services immediately.

Though, there are several categories of lecturers drawing various amounts accordingly, all are discharging duties similar to those performed by regular faculty. Since they are all qualified, they have been asking the government to conduct a qualifying examination for them and regularise their services. They have been looking at the AP School Education Regulatory and Monitoring Commission for speedy redressal of their long pending grievances.