Many guest lecturers yet to receive 2 months' honorarium

Some of the guest faculty members appointed recently to government degree colleges haven’t been paid honorarium for the last two months.

The department of collegiate education is said to have released the funds, but the money hasn’t yet been disbursed by the college principals.

Speaking to DH, some guest faculty members said they faced the problem earlier also.

Also Read: Government pays guest teachers as low as Rs 7,500 a month

“Our payments were delayed earlier too. The principals are citing technical reasons and not releasing the honorarium,” said a guest faculty member.

Another guest lecturer pointed out that the regular college lecturers who are paid as per the UGC scale get their salaries credited on time.

“But no one bothers to release our honorarium despite repeated requests,” the lecturer said.

Irregular pay is not the only issue that guest lecturers face.

“If we are late by a few minutes, we are marked absent and our honorarium is affected. When our log-in time is monitored so seriously, why not the pay,” another guest lecturer asked.

For the current academic year, the department has hired over 10,500 guest lecturers by increasing the minimum honorarium from Rs 13,000 to Rs 26,000.

The government has released Rs 35 crore to pay the guest lecturers for March (16 days) and April, a senior official said and promised to find out why the honorarium hasn’t yet reached them at the district level.