PIL urges govt to take over, manage finances of pvt edu institutions

PIL urges govt to take over, manage finances of pvt edu institutions

TIMES NEWS NETWORK

Chennai:01.09.2020

A public interest writ petition filed in the Madras High court has urged the state government’s treasury to take over the finances of private educational institutions so that salaries could be disbursed to teachers and professors, besides keeping fee reasonable for students.

A division bench of Justice M M Sundresh and Justice R Hemalatha issued notice to the authorities, returnable by four weeks.

In his petition, Trichy-based activist K M Karthik wanted the state government to reduce the fee structures of private schools and colleges after a detailed audit by the income tax department. “Unfortunately in some private schools, the wages of teachers are as little as ₹5,000 a month,” the petitioner stated.

Stating that there is no legislation which specifies salary structure of teaching faculty in private educational institutions, he said teachers are left to the mercy of the managements for their salary. With the labour department staying away from monitoring and controlling management of institutions citing interim orders of courts, a majority of managements of private educational institutions under-paid the teachers for a long time. Noting that the income tax department had seized more than ₹1,000 crore from just three chains of private educational institutions in the past six months, he said it is an example of how largescale malpractices were happening in the finances of private schools and colleges. There is no proper mechanism either to verify the earnings of private educational institutions through fees or the expenditure they incurred towards salaries, the PIL said.