Bhubaneswar, July 28: About 4,000 lecturers of non-government colleges in the state have announced to wear black badges and boycott all classes from August 1 to protest against the delay in implementing their promotion policy.
The lecturers' forum of the all the non-government colleges in the state has also sought the intervention of chief minister Naveen Patnaik in this issue.
The "discriminatory policies" between the government and non-government college lecturers in matters of promotion had led to a situation where not a single lecturer among the 4,000 had been promoted in the past 35 years, one of the forum members said.
The forum has decided to intensify the agitation if the policy was not implemented at the earliest.
"The affected lecturers are completely disheartened, dejected and disgusted by such discrimination. Many have retired without a single promotion," said the forum convenor Kamal Prasad Mohanty.
After repeated pleas by the forum, the higher education department had declared the promotion policy exclusively for lecturers of non-government colleges in January 2014 and the chief minister approved the decision.
The teachers, however, objected to the "defective policy", which said that while a junior lecturer in a government college was eligible for promotion to the post of a reader after completing 18 years, the same process takes 27 years for lecturers in non-government colleges.In June, the criterion was changed from 27 years to 23 years at a meeting, presided by higher education minister Pradeep Panigrahi," said Mohanty.
"The amended policy has received the approval from the law department but awaits a nod from the finance department," said a senior higher education official.
NSS recruitment
The government has decided to increase the number of National Service Scheme (NSS) volunteers in universities and colleges by one lakh. At present, there are about 90,000 volunteers in the state.
These volunteers are to be engaged by the educational institutes for activities such as campus beautification, blood donation, plantation, health and cattle camps, awareness programmes, social audit, rescue and rehabilitation operation at the time of emergency, fire-fighting, kitchen gardening, waste material management, community mobilisation, event management, computer literacy, youth leadership, disaster management, first-aid training, women empowerment and many more. This apart, they are supposed to undertake special camping programmes.
However, the higher education department has found that many institutions are not taking interest in the NSS activities. "The state cell, the regional directorate and all bureaus are not conducting the activities properly," said a senior official in the department.
Higher education minister Pradeep Panigrahi in a recent meeting expressed his concern over the fact that huge funds were lying unused at the NSS bureau level.
"The vice-chancellors of all varsities have been asked to hold monthly review meeting regularly for proper utilisation of the unspent balance and NSS activities. A revised guideline is to be prepared for the purpose of introducing new activities by an expert committee with the approval of government within 15 days," said the minister.
A special team under the leadership of Utkal University vice-chancellor Ashok Das has been constituted to design the NSS activities to be undertaken by all the bureaus and measured for 100 per cent activation of NSS units.
To make all the units active during this academic session, the department has asked the NSS bureaus to adopt seven to 10 villages as model ones. For the proper functioning of the activities, the department has also approved the proposal for an NSS unit in Bhubaneswar.
The department has also decided to organise state-level conventions regularly for motivating the NSS volunteers and creating awareness among them. The first meet will be held at Berhampur University.
