Around 1,500 guest lecturers across the State working in Government First Grade Colleges are left in the lurch as they have not only been denied salary but preparations have been made to send them home.
Dearth of teachers in government colleges had led to the appointment of guest lecturers, a practice in place for quiet sometime. Many colleges recruit guest lecturers but their salaries are never paid on time.
For guest lecturers who taught in the academic year 2006-07, only the December 2006 salary has been paid while they have yet to receive the pay for January, February and March 2007. The salary for academic year 2007-08 has not been paid at all, say the guest lecturers.
In every academic year, for nearly nine months the service of the guest lecturers would be utilised. They are engaged on a monthly pay of Rs 5,000. But payments are made only once or twice a year, complain the lecturers.
Though lecturers have submitted various memorandum to the government to provide salary on time, they say there has been no response.
Most universities in the State have introduced semester system. Since there is a shortage of permanent lecturers, colleges depend on guest lecturers for exam work. But they are not paid for this. In some colleges even if there are permanent lecturers, they do not attend exam work. Supervising examination is an indispensable part of evaluation work and lecturers under UGC are not given remuneration for evaluation. Hence, these lecturers do not attend the examination work.
These days, the college principals compel the guest lecturers to come for evaluation work. In the semester system, exams are conducted twice a year and they will have to take care of the examination work.
An amount of Rs 50 will be paid to these guest lecturers. Government First Grade College Guest Lecturer Federation office bearers Gurudutt Kulkarni and Rajendra Doddamani has requested the government to pay their salary and also allow them to continue after May.
