Retired university teachers, staff rue their lot
2 min readPATNA: Even as the Supreme Court recently asked the Centre to make the lives of employees easier after their retirement, thousands of retired teachers and non-teaching employees of different universities in the state are ruing their lot. Several pensioners have died in absence of proper medicare, leaving their huge arrears to be claimed by their widows.
In response to a PIL filed by Bihar State University Pensioners’ Association secretary K K Sinha, the state government had in 2016 filed an affidavit in the Patna HC, stating that a sum of Rs 926 crore would be released by the government for disbursement of arrears after cabinet approval. The government had also said given details of the university- wise arrears of teachers and employees ranging from Rs 100 crore to Rs 300 crore.
However, the government is yet to honour the commitment made in its affidavit.
On March 10 this year, the government wrote to the office of the Accountant General, communicating sanction of the grant for payment of four months’ salaries, arrears of DA from July 2016 to August 2017 and also arrears of pension. This grant was supposed to be deposited in the PL account of individual universities. But the grants are yet to reach the universities, said Federation of University Teachers’ Associations of Bihar (Futab) working president Kanhaiya Bihari Sinha.
“The issue of non-payment of huge arrears of salaries to the working as well as retired teachers and non-teaching staff was hotly debated in the Bihar Legislative Council also recently, but the government failed to give any specific reply. Merely routing the payment of salary and pension of university staff through treasury will not help unless the government ensures timely and regular payment,” said Sinha.
Futab general secretary Sanjay Kumar Singh urged CM Nitish Kumar to intervene in the matter for regularizing the payment of salaries and pension to the university staff. He also demanded payment of revised UGC payscales to the college and university teachers of the state.
Courtesy: TNN
