In a letter to Vice-Chancellor Dr Nitin Karmalkar, protesters have threatened to return their degrees if the matter is not taken up with authorities concerned within a month.
Written by Sayan Ghosh
Former students of the Savitribai Phule Pune University (SPPU), who are currently professors at various universities across the state, gathered at the university campus on Wednesday to protest against the state government’s “failure to recruit new lecturers in government-funded colleges since 2012”.
The professors, who had come from areas such as Sangli, Satara, Shrirampur and Nagar, said they were disturbed by the employment scenario in the state as despite holding M Phil and Ph D degrees, and clearing the States Eligibility Test (SET) and the National Eligibility Test (NET), a majority of them were still teaching at colleges where the remuneration was between Rs 5,000 to Rs 7,000 per month.
The protesters, in a letter to Vice-Chancellor Dr Nitin Karmalkar, threatened to return their degrees to the university if the matter was not taken up with authorities concerned within a month. “Going by our educational qualifications, we are not paid enough. It is difficult to support and sustain our families,” said Mahavir Sable, who holds Masters and M ED degrees from SPPU’s Hindi department. Sable, who had cleared the SET, said, “Our salary is less than that of a permanent peon of a college or a state-level university.
Another lecturer, Amol Shinde of the Department of Commerce, said, “About 9,000 posts of professors are lying vacant in the state but the government has not conducted any fresh recruitments recently.” “The government must urgently start the recruitment process,” he added.