Pension fund for Nalanda Open University staff
2 min readPatan: Nalanda Open University (NOU) on Monday decided to set up its own pension fund for the benefit of its regular employees. The decision was taken at a joint meeting of the NOU’s executive council (syndicate) and academic council held under the chairmanship of vice-chancellor Ras Bihari Prasad Singh.
Introducing the proposal, NOU pro-VC R P Upadhyaya said the fund would be established without any financial assistance from the government. A sum of Rs 5 crore would be deposited in the bank and the interest earned thereupon would be utilized in disbursement of pension and other retirement benefits to the NOU employees. At present the university has no such fund to pay the pension to its employees after retirement, he said.
The meeting, which was also attended by Patna University vice-chancellor Y C Simhadri and other distinguished academics, also decided to introduce a nine-month certificate course in Hindi-English translation from the current academic session. The draft regulations of this course were approved in the meeting.
The meeting discussed the draft ordinance and regulations governing the award of PhD by NOU and authorized the VC to constitute a three-member committee of academics to finalize the draft in the light of the recent guidelines of the National Council on Teacher Education (NCTE). It also approved the academic calendar of the university for the academic year 2014-15. As per the calendar, admission to all its courses, right from certificate to PG level, would be held from July 8 to August 16 and the examinations would be held from February 10 to June 30. The dates of students’ counselling have also been specified.
The amendment to the regulations of its BEd programme was also approved wherein all the applicants for admission would have to take the entrance test. This amendment has been proposed in view of the declining rush for BEd admission. They also approved the appointment of coordinators of different NOU schools and also decided to enhance the honorarium and other facilities to the staff on contract.
NOU registrar S P Sinha pointed out that the university has been expanding its academic horizon by introducing more job-oriented courses. NOU has already been allotted a plot of 10 acres for establishment of its new campus at Nalanda and the construction work would be started soon. The university has already been running as many as 115 courses with about 1.35 lakh students on its roll. The university has got as many as 40 study centres in different parts of Bihar and Jharkhand, he added.
Courtesy: TNN
