Coimbatore: About 300 non-teaching staff of Bharathiar University on Monday staged a sit-in protest in front of the university’s syndicate hall when the syndicate meeting was in progress, demanding pay hike. They also tried to picket higher education secretary Sunil Paliwal,
who was chairing the meeting.
The workers said they had been demanding pay hike for more than a year. In the syndicate meeting held in September last year, a committee comprising two syndicate members and a finance official was formed to revise their pay, the workers said. “The committee decided that our pay would be made equal to that of what the district collector had decided. But now, the higher education secretary says we would not give the pay fixed by the committee, but rather a 25% hike,” said a protester.
The workers said they were under the designations of assistant technical officer (ATO) and office assistant (OA). “Several of us have been working for more than 10 years as daily wage labourers. But in 2015, non-teaching staff with consolidated pay were appointed. If we are given 25% hike, the juniors who joined in 2015 will be getting more pay than those who have been working for more than 10 years,” said another worker.
Meanwhile, Paliwal said the last salary fixation for non-teaching workers was done in 2015. “The syndicate had decided to give a 25% increase for both daily wage and consolidated pay workers based on their 2015 salary and give them the arrears from November 2017. We will form a committee to address any discrepancies in the pay and based on the individual representations, we would rectify them,” he said.TNN