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Teachers unhappy over pay panel report

Staff Reporter

‘Pay scales have not gone up in terms of parity with Civil Services’

NEW DELHI: Reacting to the recommendations of the Pay Review Committee that submitted its report to the University Grants Commission on Friday, most teachers across Central universities in the Capital appeared discontented with the suggestions.

“It is a mixed bag. The basic thing we expected from the committee was an up-gradation of the pay scales of teachers, which we have not got. We had asked for improved parity with Civil Services, but our pay has not gone up in terms of parity,” lamented Jawaharlal Nehru University Teachers’ Association president Kamal Mitra Chenoy.

“The whole idea of setting up the committee was to boost the pay scales in order to attract and retain talent. It is not facilities like medical allowance and leave travel concession but an increased basic salary that would attract new entrants to the profession,” he added.

‘Uncalled for’

Prof. Chenoy also termed trifurcation of professors as professor, senior professor and professor of eminence as “uncalled for”: “If someone has become a professor, he/she ought to be of eminence. Why do we need a separate post? If that’s the case, we should have the trifurcation of the vice-chancellor’s post as well.”

The committee headed by Prof. G.K. Chadha produced the report in 13 months.

Teachers have also objected to “discrimination” between college and university teachers. “One of our longstanding demands was introduction of the professor’s grade in all colleges. That has come, but in the form of a new post called senior associate professor. Professorship has been restricted to only post-graduate colleges,” rued Rajeev Kumar Kunwar of the Democratic Teachers’ Front.

“So while at the university level the third promotion for a lecturer will be to the post of professor, at colleges, a third promotion will only make them entitled to the position of senior associate professor,” he pointed out.

Delhi University Teachers’ Association president Aditya Narayan Misra said: “Readers stand downgraded as they have been placed in the pay band-3, while the equivalent cadre in the government sector, with an increment of 400 and above and scales ending at Rs.18,300 have been placed in pay band-4 in the sixth Central Pay Commission.”

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