Thousands of teachers participated in the DUTA Dharna at Jantar Mantar today from 11 am to 3 pm. They were demanding that the UGC Pay Review Committee be set up forthwith. The Dharna was held after a month long campaign by the DUTA in which meetings of Staff Associations were held in many colleges. They came in groups, many of them in buses from their colleges.
The DUTA, FEDCUTA and AIFUCTO have already held several action programmes and submitted innumerable representation on the issue, but there has been no signal from the Government or the UGC about its constitution. Speakers pointed out that in the past the UGC Pay Review Committee had always been set up before the submission of the Central Pay Commission report. This time however, several months have passed after the submission of the 7th Pay Commission report and the Government has started the process of revising pay for government employees. Teachers were angry at the total lack of response from the Government. They were also demanding the resolution of glaring anomalies inherited from the 6th Pay Revision. A memorandum outlining their concerns and demanding urgent action by the Minister was submitted by the DUTA office-bearers to the Joint Secretary, Higher Education, Mr S.S. Sandhu, who promised to take these issues up with the Minister at the earliest.
Teachers also demanded scrapping of the Point System as well as its retrospective implementation at Delhi University which has turned the university into a zero promotion zone. They demanded the release of pensions to innumerable retired teachers and non-teaching employees, held up by a malicious decision of the Delhi University. The plight of the thousands of ad hoc teachers was highlighted and the perverse decision of Delhi University to introduce Screening Criteria that have rendered many of them ineligible to be considered for regular appointment.
Representatives of teachers’ associations of JNU and IGNOU also joined the dharna in solidarity. Prof. Ajay Patnaik, President JNUTA, and Prof. M.S.S.Raju and Dr. K.D. Prasad, President and Secretary IGNOUTA also addressed the protestors. They pointed out the specific problems that had arisen from the anomalies in their own universities and highlighted the need for the UGC Pay Review Committee. Several Presidents/Secretaries of College Staff Associations also addressed the gathering.
Many speakers highlighted the fact that the present struggle for pay revision and better service conditions had to be seen in the larger context of ongoing privatisation, rising costs of education and the increasing alienation of students, particularly from the marginalised sections of society, as evidenced in the spate of student suicides across the country which have been reported in the newspapers. It has to be part of the struggle to force the Government to enhance public spending on education, expand access to higher education to many more sections of the youth and improve the quality of education offered. The central role of the teacher in such a process was emphasized. Speakers pointed out that the Government’s policy of privatising and commercialising education had made it indifferent to the concerns of students and teachers in the public funded institutions and emphasized the need therefore for a sustained mass struggle.
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