Financial crisis: Madras univ staff wear black badge to work

Financial crisis: Madras univ staff wear black badge to work

Salaries for the employees were credited late while the contractual employees are still awaiting their pending dues for the past three months.

Subashini Vijayakumar

Updated on:

19 Mar 2024, 10:28 am

CHENNAI: Employees of Madras University on Monday wore black badges to work with the institution yet to find a permanent solution to its financial crisis.

At present, the university has been diverting the fees received from students through the Institute of Distance Education (IDE) to pay the salaries, employees said.

The I-T department had frozen more than 50 bank accounts saying that the university has to pay Rs 424 crore tax on the grounds that the university could not be considered a government university as the state’s contribution to the funds was less than 50% since 2016-17. Following this, the university gave an undertaking that the amount would be paid in installments and de-froze the accounts at the beginning of this month. Salaries for the employees were credited late while the contractual employees are still awaiting their pending dues for the past three months.

According to the employees, there are several deductions in their salaries, including insurance and loans they have got from cooperative societies. “The university has only credited us the salaries with help of IDE funds. It has not paid the insurance and loan deductions to the institutions concerned. This will only cause problems for us as we have to pay the amount with an additional interest,” a senior professor from the university said.

Moreover, professors said the university is already providing books for students pursuing distance education courses late as some of the funds are diverted for other expenses. Now, they are planning to divert the entire IDE funds to pay the salaries this year. This is against the welfare of students and the government has to step in before the situation goes out of hand, the employees said.

“There are more than 130 temporary workers on the four campuses in Chennai. We are yet to get salaries since January. While we are paid around Rs 9,000 a month. We are borrowing money every month to make ends meet. Since we are essential staff, we feel bad to quit as well,” a watchman in the university said.