Colleges not paying faculty despite fee reimbursement

Colleges not paying faculty despite fee reimbursement

TIMES NEWS NETWORK

Hyderabad:13.01.2021

Despite receiving fee reimbursements dues from the government, technical colleges — engineering, MBA, pharmacy, among others — have allegedly not paid salaries to the faculty.

Faculty members said that many colleges are not paying salaries since April. Few managements are said to be paying only 50% of the salary.

“Except for a few top colleges, managements stopped paying salaries to their faculty members during the pandemic. Between November-December 2020, the state started releasing dues to college managements. But, even now the faculty members are yet to receive salaries,” said A Santosh Kumar, president, Telangana Schools’ Technical Colleges Employees Association.

They said that even top colleges, which are collecting over one lakh rupees as the fee from each student, are not paying proper salaries. “Despite receiving reimbursement amount and collecting annual fees from students, my management is paying only 50% salaries,” said a faculty member, working at a private engineering college in Ghatkesar.

They said that most of the colleges have divided faculty into different categories and are not paying them uniformly.

“In a college, few faculty members are paid full salaries, some are paid 50% salaries, and others are not being paid at all. This is the case with almost all the colleges. Overall, about 40% of the teaching faculty in technical institutions are forced to survive without salaries,” said V Balakrishna Reddy, president, Telangana Technical Employees Association.

The managements, meanwhile, said that they have only received a part of fee reimbursement dues from the state.

“Till now, only SC/ST fee reimbursement dues are released. In the majority of colleges, 70% of total scholarships belong to BC students. Unless they are cleared, managements will not be in a position to clear salary dues,” said K Ramadas, co-convenor, Telangana Private College Management Joint Action Committee.

Jawaharlal Nehru Technological University authorities, meanwhile, said that they have already given instructions to college managements to pay salaries to their staff and added that before sanctioning affiliation, they will be verifying the ground reality and will initiate action against erring colleges.