Excelsior Correspondent
JAMMU, June 17: Cautio-ning the State Government of serious ramifications of the highly educated contractual technocrats of Polytechnic Colleges who were left to languish in open, a strong battalion of Panthers activists along with the aggrieved lecturers spearheaded by chairman of NPP Harsh Dev Singh staged a protest demonstration seeking immediate regularization of their services at Exhibition Ground, here today.
Lambasting the State Govt for not paying any heed to the miseries of contractual lecturers of Polytechnics, who were sitting on a strike for the last 12 days, Harsh Dev Singh said that these incumbents engaged as academic arrangements had been rendering their services in Technical Education Depart-ment for the last 5-25 years on a paltry salary of Rs 7000 per month with a hope that they would be regularized to earn with dignity and honour.
Dubbing their exploitation as an example of worse human rights violation, he regretted that the exploitative enslavement of the highly technically skilled lecturers comprising of BEs, B.Techs, Post Graduates and PhDs in the Polytechnic colleges on nominal wages as against regular salary for their counterparts in regular establishment, despite the same nature of work, was highly inhumane and discriminatory which had blown the Supreme Court directions of ‘Equal pay for equal work ’to winds. He rued that several of these contractual lecturers who had served the department with passion and honesty for years had become over aged.
Seeking regularization of the lecturers engaged on academic arrangements in the Technical Education Department, he said that reportedly 80-85% of the staff in 24 Polytechnics all across the State comprised of academic arrangements who were running their respective departments successfully with laudable results. He further divulged that that the State Government had admitted in recent Assembly session that there were 328 sanctioned vacant posts of lecturers and demonstrators and the incumbents working as academic arrangements were engaged on merit basis against these clear vacancies who were less than 250.
He urged upon Chief Minister Mehbooba Mufti to take serious cognizance of the miserable plight of the technocrats and facilitate their immediate absorption against the clear vacancies which would have no financial implications whatsoever.
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