32 DU teachers not paid for months

As many as 32 teachers at Atma Ram Sanatan Dharma (ARSD) College are still waiting for their salary for February, and three faculty members at the Computer Science department have lost hope of getting salaries for the month of March-July, 2011.

Teachers said when asked about the reason,principal Sandeep Sharma said that a separate grant released by DU is getting delayed.

“All the teachers who have not got their salaries are ad hoc teachers and were appointed under the Other Backward Classes (OBC) enhanced scheme which has a separate grant,” said K K Anand, president of the staff association of the college.

The appointment of teachers under this scheme was made after 27 per cent OBC reservation was included in Central Universities. “With the increase in the number of students under the OBC category, the workload increased. The teachers appointed under this scheme are not necessarily from the OBC category.

The salary comes from a separate grant created after this reservation was introduced,” informed Rajesh Mohan, former principal of the college.

As per the teachers, “In July, 2011, Sharma was appointed as the new principal. He told us that he cannot clear our past dues. Its March, 2012 now and those four months’ salary have still not been cleared.

“An official also told us that since the Computer Science course is self-financing, the teachers’ salaries are paid out of students’ fees and there i shortage of funds” said a professor on conditions of anonymity.

There are around 150 teachers out of which around 80 are on adhoc basis.
“There were instances of the salary coming few days late, that happens occasionally. But not for this long time,” said Mohan.

The teachers said such delay have happened twice before.

“We are ad hoc teachers and we fear if we question more, we will be fired. Our salaries are important to us. Our whole household is dependent on it. We are not getting any assurance or a deadline.

“How does anybody expect us to work like this? In this politics of the management, we are suffering,” said another teacher.

Sharma said salaries of teachers appointed under this grant in most of the colleges have been delayed.

“This is to malign the college, it is not just ARSD but several other colleges where there is a similar situation.

The money under this scheme comes from the university as after a CAG audit, it was found that in the past years, the ex-principals were misusing the funds, thus instead of UGC, DU was given the authority to release the funds,” stated Sharma.

Commenting on the pending salaries of the teachers of the computer science department, he said, “There have been no audit in this department since the past 10 years. A case is pending with the governing body about the pending salaries which was not payed by the last principal.”