As many as 700 lecturers engaged on academic arrangement and working on contract basis in different Colleges across Kashmir are without salary for the past nine months.
In the wake of COVID-19 outbreak, while the department paidtheir employees- permanent as well as contractual , on time, the highereducation department continues to deprive these lecturers of their wages,alleged the lecturers.
“Amid the COVID-19 outbreak, it is very difficult for us tosustain a quarantined life without salaries which further enlarges the crisesand hamper our morale to combat the fight against this pandemic,” said one ofthe lecturer.
“Even in the pandemic, the department seems to be unmoved.It doesn’t show any goodwill gesture towards the deprived section of teachersby releasing our pending salaries,” he said.
The lecturer served the department on contract basis formore than 20 years to fill the gap which gets created due to the delay in therecruitment for filling the vacancies of assistant professors in colleges.
“We have always worked at par with the permanent faculty ofthe colleges, and have played an active role in building career of hundreds ofstudents. We have given our best in all possible ways to benefit the students,”a college contractual said.
The academic arrangements accused the HED for doingstep-motherly treatment with the contractual staff saying that the authoritieswere least bothered to address their genuine grievances.
“The department is hell-bent to ruin our future. We arehighly qualified and most of the candidates working in the colleges havecrossed the upper age limit. Some are at the verge of becoming educatedunemployed youth,” another college contractual said.
The academic arrangements urged the Lieutenant Governor ofJ&K and advisor KK Sharma for their personal intervention into the matter.
“In the prevailing crises, everyone is in fear and is tryingto find ways to help the government to contain spread of COVID 19. Someemployees are dedicating their one-day salary towards the government for thecause. But we fear our families will die of starvation because we have nothingto feed them,” he said.
The academic arrangements were hired in February 2018 for aperiod of one year and were later allowed to continue till July 2019. “Afterthat the candidates got status quo from High Court in our favour, we wereallowed to continue services beyond July 2019. However, since then we didn’tget paid by the department,” one of the college contractual said.
Advisor to Lieutenant Governor J&K, K K Sharma said thematter will be looked into. “Now that the new academic session 2020-21 hasstarted, we will see how the issue can be resolved,” he said.