JAMMU: Castigating State Government for paying no heed to the plight of polytechnic contractual lecturers engaged on academic arrangements and playing with their career, Panthers activists along with the aggrieved lecturers spearheaded by Harsh Dev Singh, Chairman JKNPP and former Education Minister staged a protest seeking regularisation of their services at Exhibition Ground here on Monday.
Expressing solidarity with the contractual lecturers of Polytechnic colleges who were sitting on strike for the last seven days, Harsh said that the teaching fraternity had been rendering their services with zeal and honesty on paltry salary of Rs 7,000 per month with a hope that they would be regularised to earn with dignity and honour.
Urging for the implementation of Apex Court’s decision of ‘Equal Pay for Equal Work’ in J and K, he regretted that the exploitation of the highly educated youth comprising of BEs, BTechs and Post Graduates engaged as academic arrangements in the polytechnic colleges on nominal wages as against handsome salary for their counterparts in regular establishment, despite the same nature of work, was highly deplorable, inhumane, discriminatory and amounted to worst form of human rights violation. He added that these contractual lecturers were rendering their services in the respective Polytechnics ranging from 5 to 25 years and several of them had ironically become over aged.
Seeking regularisation of the lecturers engaged on Academic Arrangements in the Technical Education Department, he revealed that with the opening of the 18 new polytechnics, the total number of government polytechnic colleges in the State was 24 and it had been reported that 80-85 per cent of the staff in these institutions comprised of academic arrangements who were running the various departments successfully with satisfactory results.
He further divulged that that the State Government had admitted in recent Assembly session that there were 248 vacant posts of lecturers and 80 posts of demonstrators against the sanctioned 313 and 89 respectively and the incumbents working as Academic Arrangements were engaged on merit basis against these clear vacancies.
Harsh asked the government to wake up from the deep slumber and take a serious cognizance of the brewing anger of the youth which could take an ugly turn and prove disastrous for the dispensation.
Among those who spoke on the occasion include Rajesh Padgotra, Gagan Pratap Singh, Shyam Gorkha, Nirmal Kishore, Rashpaul Singh, Archana Razdaan, Sandeep Kaur, Ajay Chib, Shafqat Beigh, Rakesh Bhat, Atul Kodhi, Ankush Gupta, Vidhu Puri, Renuka Kotwal, Bhupinder Kaur, Himani Dubey, Harmeet Kaur, Tarun Gupta, Kanav Gupta, Pooja Gupta, Umesh Gupta, Sandeep Chaudhary, Anil Kumar, Vicky Sharma, Renu Kotwal, Ruchi Gupta, Shivali Sharma and Noshiba.