2nd Saturday irks lecturers

Working on a second Saturday appears to be getting on the nerves of staff and lecturers of colleges in the city. This has been in vogue after the State Government revised holidays in October following the extension of Dasara vacation on account of the TSRTC strike.

The decision to hold classes on second Saturdays was taken to ensure that students can make up time lost.

Sajida Khatoon who teaches commerce in a degree college said “We get one extra dayoff, which is a second Saturday to rejuvenate for a whole month and this has been taken away from us.” While this is so, the real disturbing fact, she said was the very poor turnout by students on second Saturdays.

“There are only five to 10 students in a class on those days while the average class strength is seventy,” she said.

Satish Kumar, a representative of unaided lecturers association wanted to know why teachers and students were being “penalised for the failure of the government.”

He also said, “Unaided lecturers are paid somewhere around `10,000 to `15,000 per month, whereas aided lecturers are paid in excess of `1 lakh for the same amount of work. However, workload falls on the unaided staff.”

Dr Shobhana. D., principal of Sarojini Naidu Vanitha Mahavidyalaya, said “in a semester, there must be 90 working days. Completion of semester is the main issue and to compensate for days lost, the options are either to extend the number of hours on regular working days or add more working days.”