Govt doubles salaries of ayurved college lecturers on contract

Nagpur: After TOI raised the issue of five government ayurved colleges in Maharashtra being banned from admitting students for BAMS and MD/MS classes for 2022-23 session due to shortage of faculty, the state government’s department of medical education and drugs has nearly doubled the salaries offered to lecturers in these colleges. This is an attempt to get lecturers appointed on contract and fill vacant posts quickly as a face-saving exercise. But it will be difficult to get lecturers on such an urgent basis, said academicians.
“The honorarium for contractual teachers was very less, due to which very few candidates were interested in joining AYUSH medical colleges. So, the government has decided to revise the salaries of lecturers,” reads the resolution issued on November 4.
The resolution says a professor will get Rs1 lakh per month, associate professor will get Rs80,000 per month, and assistant professor will get Rs70,000 per month as fixed salaries. Earlier, the highest salary was Rs50,000. The government is expecting that many current lecturers will now join government colleges and the shortage will be removed soon. But, it’s not that easy, say academicians.
Dr Mohan Yende, coordinator of National Integrated Medical Association (NIMA), said that the salary revision is welcome, but contractual staff should get salaries at par with regular (permanent) staff as per the seventh pay commission. “The government should pay salaries as per NCISM Act to contract staff. Same work same salary should be given to all. As per NCISM Act 2022, point no 17, minimum salary for teaching staff should not be less than 7th pay commission provisions,” said Dr Yende.
According to him, even if some lecturers working in private ayurved colleges join government colleges, it will take at least 60 days for private colleges to relieve them, he added. This means, the salary revision in hurry is not going to help the state so easily.
On Friday, TOI spoke to officials of AYUSH directorate, who revealed that more than 60% teachers and staff of all five Government Ayurvedic Colleges – Nagpur, Nanded, Osmanabad (Dharashiv), Mumbai and Jalgaon – are retired. Ideally, permanent appointments should have made to these vacant posts but nothing was done.
The Ayush Directorate of Maharashtra has claimed that they had released advertisements for contractual appointment of faculty, but received very poor response. “We planned to appoint more than 500 academicians on contract as teachers. But, we got less than 30 applications,” said a senior official from the directorate on condition of anonymity. The official claimed that teachers prefer working in private medical colleges.