Temporary faculty at self-financing college seek better salaries

CHENNAI: Temporary lecturers in self-financing colleges affiliated to the University of Madras are being paid extremely low salaries, somewhere in the range of `8,000 to Rs 10,000 a month. This though their workload is equal, if not more than that of those at the assistant professor level.

This issue was raised in the University’s Senate meeting on Saturday. Professor M Srinivasan, head of criminology department, read out a letter by the Self-financing Institutions Teachers Association (SFITA) seeking better pay. Later professor Gandhirajan, another senate member, said salary should be in accordance with UGC norms and the university should ensure that they get a reasonable amount.

Professor Jothi Sivagnanam, head of the economics department, said the salaries were like “daily wages”.

At this juncture, vice-chancellor P Duraisamy asked the senators if the university had any powers in this matter over the self-financing colleges. Later during a discussion, he said that the university had powers in academic issues such as syllabus and conducting of examinations, but not in financial matters.

To this, Sivagnanam said the pay and qualification could be clubbed as a package and the university could give a formal representation as it had powers to regulate the qualification. A senator from a self-financing college said they were paying good salaries to lecturers, but demanded that the university take action against the colleges that were paying low salaries.

Srinivasan and a few other senators tried to raise the issue with the governor’s secretary and the higher education secretary during the university’s convocation earlier this month, but, Duraisamy asked them to keep the discussion to issues that were on the agenda.

Srinivasan also requested the university to follow the reservation policy while appointing temporary teaching staff for the Institute of Distance Education (IDE).

Duraisamy replied that the recruitments were for a period of four months and hence reservation need not be followed.