Cash-strapped Madurai Kamaraj University starts paying salaries from pension fund

Cash-strapped Madurai Kamaraj University starts paying salaries from pension fund

By Jeyalakshmi Ramanujam| Express News Service 

| Published: 02nd March 2022 05:36 AM

Madurai Kamraj University

MADURAI: With the State government refusing to release funds to Madurai Kamaraj University (MKU) owing to audit objections, the university administration has started using Contributory Pension Scheme (CPS) funds to pay salaries and pension.

MKU needs around Rs 12 crore every month for salary and pension. Of this, Rs 4.9 crore is for 1,165 pensioners. Remaining amount is spent on the salary of 202 UGC-scale teaching staff, 303 administrative staff, and more than 500 consolidated salaried non-teaching staff.

MKU Pensioners Association President and former syndicate member R Srinivasan said the university has already exhausted a corpus fund of around Rs 400 crore, kept for paying retirement benefits. “Now, the university has started using CPS, which is against MKU’s statutes,” he said.

A panel appointed under retired HC Judge Akbar Ali had pointed out violations made in faculty appointments but no remedial action was taken, he said. The documents related to the 3,000 audit objections, accessed by TNIE, reveals that most of the objections are related to appointment of teachers and excess non-teaching staff.

An MKU professor said from 2010 onwards there has been lot of irregularities, including appointment of project assistants and appointment of associate and assistant professors at the Department of Film Studies.

Save Higher Education Forum Co-Convener and former General Secretary of Madurai Kamaraj, Manonmaniam Sundaranar, Mother Teresa and Alagappa University Teachers’ Association (MUTA) P Vijayakumar said, “For more than 10 years, there have been no elected representatives in senate and syndicate. The present senate and syndicate have only nominated members,” he said.

According to Registrar VS Vasantha, the university started utilising the CPS fund as it does not have enough money. “The university’s main source of income of fee from students and affiliated colleges is not enough to meet the expenses. A proposal for `27.50 crore funding has been sent to the government,” she said.

“A committee led by syndicate member R Lakshmipathi was appointed to clear objections in teaching staff recruitment. Another committee led by syndicate member A Meshach Ponraj was appointed for non-teaching staff appointments. Of the 102 teachers recruited over the past 15 years, audit objections have been raised in 70 cases,” she added.