Guwahati, May 25 : Teachers of Gauhati University will launch a joint agitation with their counterparts from Dibrugarh University and Assam Agriculture University to mount pressure on Dispur to implement the revised pay package recommended by the human resource development ministry for the faculty.
The Gauhati University Teachers’ Association has started correspondence with teachers of Dibrugarh University and AAU and decided to constitute a joint action committee to launch a statewide agitation to pressurise the Assam government to concede to their demand.
A formal resolution was taken during the general body meeting of the teachers’ association last week. The general secretary of the association, Jogen Chandra Kalita, told The Telegraph that teachers of Dibrugarh University and the AAU have responded positively and the joint action committee would be constituted in the next couple of days.
He said the joint action committee would chalk out agitation programmes for all the three universities that could include boycotting examinations. Reiterating that the teachers of the three state-run universities deserve the attractive pay package announced by the UGC and the HRD ministry in 2007, Kalita said the existing pay does not attract the younger generation which have put in years of exhaustive studies and achieved many degrees.
He said it was a matter of serious concern that most of the current generation of brilliant youths does not opt for teaching as a profession because of the poor pay.
The existing basic pay of a lecturer of the state-run university is Rs 8,000, Rs 12,000 for a reader and Rs 16,000 for a professor. Kalita pointed out that in case the government implemented the new pay scale, the basic salary would be Rs 16,000 for a lecturer, Rs 37,000 for a reader and Rs 39,000 for a professor.
Under pressure from the faculty, the vice-chancellor of Gauhati University, Okhil Kumar Medhi, has sent the necessary papers and reports to Dispur to implement the new pay package.
The VC’s office had earlier maintained that since the new pay scale is basically for central universities, the authority cannot put pressure on the government to implement the same for GU teachers.
An official in the education department said the government is not in a position to implement the pay scale at this moment. He said the budgetary allocation for state university has been increased for overall development.
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