Salary delays put Karnataka varsities' staff to hardships

The inordinate delay in disbursal of salaries is causing untold hardships to the teaching and non-teaching staff of the state-run universities.

This has been the case for the past three months. This has become a norm, more so, after the government started depositing the salaries straight into the accounts of the staff through human resource management system (HRMS) system

The varsity employees have not received their salaries for the month of July even two weeks after the payday.

A senior lecturer of Kuvempu University, Shivamogga, told DH, “It’s been 15 days and we have not received our salaries. The government at least should think about the D group employees and their commitments.”

However, the authorities of Bangalore and Tumkur varsities, dug deep into their internal resources to pay the Group D employees their wages.

Prof Y S Siddegowda, vice chancellor of Tumkur University said, “We have paid the salaries using our internal resources as it was delayed by the government and causing inconvenience to staff.”

Speaking to DH, a senior official of Bangalore University, said, “Earlier, the salaries were paid by respective universities, and the government used to release funds for salaries once in three months. Since June, the Higher Education department is paying the salaries of varsity staff through the HRMS mode.”

Meanwhile, sources in Higher Education department said, the cadre of some of the university employees were not matching with HRMS and hence there’s been a trouble in transferring money through treasury.

“The cadre like vice chancellor, registrar are not in HRMS. And even the upper age limit in HRMS ends at 60 whereas the retirement age for university employees has been extended to 62 years and for vice chancellors it is up to 67 years,” explained a source.

Meanwhile, heads of some of the universities felt this move by the government has disturbed the autonomy of the universities and that the government should not interfere in it, they said.