Lecturers Left High And Dry: Govt balks at acting tough against erring engg colleges

Hyderabad: It appears that institutions of higher studies in the State have become centres not for excellence but for exploitation of teachers.

Many professional colleges found to have not paid salaries of their lecturers for months or years.

According to Telangana Schools Technical College's Employees Association (TSTEA), the colleges are holding back the original certificates of the faculty and not paying salaries ranging from six months to anywhere around two years. Besides, in many cases, the lecturers working in private engineering colleges have been denied salaries for years.

"We have been representing this to the Telangana State Higher Education Department (TSHED), Jawaharlal Nehru Technological University, Hyderabad (JNTU-H), Telangana State Council of Higher Education (TSCHE), University Grants Commission (UGC), All-India Council for Technical Education (AICTE).

Besides, the State and Central ministers of Education, and secretaries and commissioners of higher education departments.However, none of them has come to the rescue of the faculty, except giving promises and assurances," saysTSTEA State president A Santhosh Kumar.

Against this backdrop, in one incident a woman faculty member of a private engineering college located in Hayatnagar took to social media topour out her woes.

She was terminated from service.She claimed that the college management has to pay pending salary of one year to her. However, over a year of battle yielded her nothing. She wanted that at least the returned her original academic certificates held by it.She lodged a complaint with the State Higher Education department. "I was asked to go to the college to collect my original certificates. It seems someone from the department called the college authorities to act." But, what followed was shocking to her. "The college authorities kept my certificates on one side and another letter that they wanted me to sign kept on the other."

Pouring her heart out in public about the way a faculty member is being treated and exposing the culture of exploitation adopted by some professional technical and management colleges, she said the college wanted me to sign the letter to the effect that they cleared not only all the pending salary dues,but also that the college paid her salary till date.

"The faculty who was terminated a year ago had to accept that she worked during that period and received salary," Santosh Kumar said.

"This is how a college is blackmailing me to give back my academic certificates," she cried posting on social media. "When teachers protest for salaries and other services benefits it has become a routine for the police to appear and lift them from there to the police station. Earlier, it was in the name of Covid norms, now it is in the name of law and order," Kumar rued.

But, how the State government and the Higher Education department could remain spectators to such blackmailing of faculty, forcing them to sign papers under duress. Why no inquiry was initiated and no action was taken against erring colleges despite numerous complaints, they ask.