Varsity's non-teaching staff to launch agitation

Non-teaching employees of Himachal Pradesh University have decided to launch an agitation to press for their long-pending demands, including filling of vacant posts and strengthening of pension corpus fund.

Representatives of all four non-teaching employees unions have come on a common platform and constituted a “joint coordination committee” to spearhead the agitation, which would start with a “gate meeting” on Wednesday.

The representatives expressed concern over indifferent and non-responsive attitude of the government and the varsity authorities, and said if the grant-in-aid from the government was not increased substantially, it would be difficult for the university to pay the salaries and pension to employees.

There has been a huge increase in salaries of university teachers and the liability of payment of pension and other retirement benefits has increased phenomenally, but there has been no commensurate in the income of the government and also the government grants, said Waryam Singh, an employees union leader and member of the HPU executive council.

Hitendra Thakur, who was elected president of the joint coordination committee, said the “casual approach” of the government was responsible for the present situation, and employees can adopt the path of agitation for which the authorities would be fully responsible.

Thakur said a 26-point demand charter has been prepared.

Their demands included implementation of the decisions of executive council, benefit of secretariat allowance to retiring employees, filling of vacant posts, strengthening of pension corpus fund, among others.