Dead teachers asked to refund pay hike

Six of the 174 PU readers, whose revised pay scaled have been slashed by the state HRD, are no more. Yet they have been asked to pay anything between Rs 2 lakh and Rs  4 lakh, which they got as hiked basic pay.

Since 2001, readers of state universities across the country, who had put in more than five years of service, were getting a revised basic pay of Rs 14,950 as per UGC’s fifth pay revision. However, a recent state HRD audit opposed to the revised scale, as it was not
notified by the state government.

Consequently, the HRD last week issued an order asking the PU to revert these teachers to their original pay scale. It, however, did not know that six of the 174 readers were dead and urged the PU to issue the notification to the deceased teachers.

Opposing the HRD direction, President of the Federation of University Service Teachers’ Association of Bihar (FUSTAB), Prof Ram Jatan Sinha, said the pay fixation of teachers was done by the Statutory Pay Fixation Committee and, therefore, it cannot be altered by an executive order.

“Teachers have been getting their salaries as per the UGC norms, and hence there was no ground to slash it,” Sinha told Deccan Herald, while cautioning Nitish regime “not to unsettle issues which have been already been settled.”