 Early Times Report
Jammu, Dec 4: Castigating the state government for its criminal apathy towards School, College and Polytechnic lecturers engaged on Academic Arrangements, a strong contingent of Panther party activists along with scores of such lecturers spearheaded by Rajesh Padgotra, Provincial President JKNPP, Gagan Pratap Singh Gen. Secy Young Panthers, Shyam Gorkha Vice President PTU and other leaders staged a massive protest demonstration seeking immediate salary enhancement and regularization of their services at Exhibition Ground in Jammu today.
Dubbing the exploitation of educated youth of the state as worst form of human rights violation, Rajesh Padgotra said that the highly qualified educated underemployed youth in the State were treated like mere expendables He said that the brewing anger of the youth could explode any moment like a catastrophe and cause irreparable damages.
Expressing solidarity with the College, School and Polytechnic lecturers engaged on contract / academic arrangement basis and who included PhDs, M Phils, Double post graduates and others, he regretted that such highly qualified youth were being paid Rs. 7,000/- per month in Higher Secondary schools and Polytechnics where as Rs. 8,000/- in colleges which had not been revised for the last more than 12 years. He said that they were oppressed like bonded labourers whose honorarium was grossly meagre in proportion to the quantum of work assigned to them.
He reiterated his demand of enhancement in the honorarium of all such the contractual/ academic arrangement lecturers who were being made to work for paltry salary as against their regular compeers and sought hike in the emoluments to at least Rs. 20,000/- as the existing rates had not been revised since 2004.
Lambasting the discriminatory exclusion of the said category of employees from the purview of Special Provisions Act 2010, he regretted that while adhoc, contractual, consolidated and other temporary employees engaged in various state govt. Deptts were regularized after a period of seven years, these lecturers were arbitrarily ignored despite their commendable services in the field of education. He exhorted the State govt. to include these lecturers in the ambit of the said Act or draft a separate policy to pave way for their regularization of services.
Prominent among those who spoke on the occasion were Nirmal Kishore, Parshottam Parihar, Kewal Krishan Sharma, Raj Kumar, Udeyveer, Vinod Kumar, Shakeel Anjum, Chetan Sharma,Surinder, Irfan Bhat, Ravender Jamwal, Seema, Sangeeta Sambyal, Balwinder Kaur, Reva Rani, Kiran Sharma, Shilpa Raina and others. |
