Nagpur: A delegation of teachers from two engineering colleges, which are facing closure, met Nagpur University vice chancellor SP Kane recently to complain about non-payment of their salaries and other dues over nearly two years. Though the VC assured to help them, stating that they won’t allow the colleges to shut operations without clearing their dues, the teachers weren’t convinced.
The teachers belonging to ITM College of Engineering at Kamptee, and Suresh Deshmukh College of Engineering at Wardha, claimed that their managements have failed to pay them salaries for nearly two years.
On March 6, TOI had first reported about these two colleges, along with Namdeorao Poreddiwar College of Engineering and Technology at Gadchiroli, applying for closure to the joint director of technical education office in the city. With these three, the total number of engineering colleges to shut operations has touched 11 in last two years.
In the aftermath of the Rs7,000 crore scholarship scam, first exposed by TOI in 2013, the government has started tightening the screws, which led to detection of many bogus entries and colleges as well. As a result, the entire disbursal was made online to avoid duplication. However, there was also inordinate delay in releasing the scholarship amount, which forced these colleges to down shutters.
A majority of such little known colleges, mostly owned by politicians and education barons, were operating without regular teachers and infrastructure, which was exposed by TOI from time to time. As they were solely dependent on the scholarship money, they failed to survive stiff competition.
Of late, even students showed their back to engineering courses and were preferring general courses, which left these colleges with no alternative but to close operations.
According to teachers, their managements initially cited fund crunch to delay salaries, and then suddenly terminated them without any notice. “Though we’re working since last eight to ten years, we were kept on contractual basis. It was just a couple of years back that they absorbed us on probation. They kept on assuring us that they would fully pay our salaries and dues. But all of us are given termination notice, stating that we were not regular teachers,” they told TOI.
In 2016, NU had cracked the whip against 32 deficient engineering colleges, for operating without mandatory number of teachers and infrastructure. It had even frozen admissions. However, politicians operating them put tremendous pressure on the NU administration, forcing it to lift the ban on admissions.
(With inputs from Tejas Mundhada)
