Thiruvananthapuram: State cabinet, on Wednesday, approved a draft legislation for regulating the appointment and service conditions of teaching and non-teaching staff in self-financing institutions.
According to the provisions in the bill, management and employees should sign a contract specifying the details such as pay scale, increment, grade and promotion. Working days and workload of the employees would be akin to that in government and aided colleges. There should be provident fund and insurance for all employees. For teachers, appointment and retirement age will be what UGC and affiliated university specify.
An appeal provision will be introduced at the university level, using which students, teachers or non-teaching staff can challenge disciplinary actions taken by college managements. The university syndicate would be authorized to consider and take appropriate decision on such appeals.
The bill insists that education agencies that run self-financing colleges should share with respective universities the full details of teaching and non-teaching staff. College managements would have to comply with the provisions in the bill within three months of the bill coming into force. The registration conditions will be finalized by respective universities to which the colleges are affiliated.
The bill comes in the wake of widespread complaints regarding the lack of transparency in appointment and staff remuneration in self-financing colleges. Six months after the law comes into force, self- financing colleges will have to set up an internal quality assurance cell, PTA, student grievance redressel cell and college council. The college is supposed to set up forums that will deal with sexual harassment complaints.
However, the details of the bill released by the chief minister’s office is silent on the minimum wages for teaching and non-teaching staff. Though the government had earlier made an attempt to fix the salary scale of teaching faculty, most self-financing colleges refused to follow it. There are over 50,000 employees working in over 1,000 self-financing colleges in state and a majority of them are underpaid.