The SIET building in Bhubaneswar,Pictures by Sanjib Mukherjee

Bhubaneswar, July 29: Set up with much fanfare on four acres of prime land in the capital over 25 years ago, the State Institute of Education Technology (SIET) is lying in a shambles with its employees staring at an uncertain future.

Reliable sources said SIET employees may soon be transferred to other departments. “The government will take a call on the future of the institute,” said a senior official of the school and mass education department.

SIET, which was set up here in 1986 under the aegis of the Union ministry of human resource development, aimed at imparting education through audio-visual technology supporting the school and mass education department.

The institute was actively involved in producing audio-visual teaching aids and children’s educational videos, many of which won national awards.

The central government funded its programmes and paid the employees till 2006. Things started deteriorating after that and a rift appeared between the employees and the administration.

According to the employees, a 24-hour educational channel was proposed by the Union HRD for SIET but the tower and the facilities were handed over to Orissa Space Applications Centre (ORSAC) in 2007.

The employees alleged that the audio-visual educational material, which should have been produced at SIET that has the necessary infrastructure, is presently being outsourced.

“This is ironical as we have the infrastructure and expertise for this. Instead of using our services, the government, in its wisdom, has decided to get it done through outside agencies. In the process, they are killing an institution,” said Akash Kumar Majhi, a SIET employee.

For the record, SIET has two studios, including the main studio, on its premises apart from five cameras that could be used for both indoor and outdoor shoots. The campus also boasts of two editing suites but long periods of disuse have begun to take its toll on the infrastructure. “One of the editing suites appears to have developed problems,” said another employee.

SIET, Bhubaneswar, has no one to take care of its administrative unit. Even the post of the director is lying vacant. The salaries of the employees have been irregular for a long time. Sources said more than 70 employees have not received their salaries for the last several months.

“We neither have a chief administrative officer, nor a production in-charge or an engineer in-charge. How can the organisation function in the absence of these key figures? We have a well-equipped production unit but there has been no power here since April. All production-related work has come to a halt. The studios, too, are in bad shape,” said Satya Narayan Sahu, joint secretary, staff coordination committee.

On the other hand, school and mass education secretary Aparajita Sarangi, the ex-officio chairman of SIET, said that the employees were not serious about their work and this had made the institute practically defunct.

“We tried every bit but the will to work is not there among the employees. They have not been performing well and have stopped producing the educational material in the volume expected from the institute. That’s why the central government stopped the fund flow,” she said, but added in the same breath that the employees were a talented bunch.

“They are talented and qualified people but they have not met the expectations. The productivity has gone down though they were supposed to produce at least 200 audio-visual items per year. Hence, we have assigned some of the work to other agencies,” she said.