Teachers demand salary hike, to protest on Mar 22

MUMBAI: The Bombay University and College Teachers’ Union (BUCTU) will protest against the University of Mumbai (MU) next week for non-revision of teachers’ salaries as per the 7th Pay Commission, apathy by the varsity towards teachers’ complaints and scheduling college exams without considering other all-india competitive exams.

The sit-down protest has been scheduled for March 22 at the university’s Fort campus.

“The state issued a government resolution (GR) on the 7th pay commission, but the university is yet to implement it. The university sat on the implementation of the 6th Pay Commission and it is the teachers who suffered,” said Madhu Paranjape, BUCTU general secretary.

In a statement released for MU vice-chancellor Suhas Pednekar, the union has asked the varsity to organise Career Advancement Scheme (CAS) regularly.

CAS is a compulsory training programme for all teachers to be conducted by universities and unaided institutes, as prescribed by the University Grants Commission (UGC). As per UGC guidelines, teachers’ promotions depends on CAS training and their performance.

“The university organised CAS training a few years ago. The backlog has been mounting ever since because it then asked individual aided colleges to do the needful. The university has not even bothered to check whether the colleges have conducted CAS or not,” Paranjape said.

Last month, the university announced dates for its examinations. But within a couple of weeks, several exams were rescheduled after students complained about dates of MU papers clashing with chartered accountancy (CA) and company secretary (CS) examinations.

“The university doesn’t want to learn from mistakes at all. We won’t allow such apathy to continue,” said the statement released by BUCTU.

There is a backlog and we have started work to form panels of experts, which will be assigned to colleges where CAS can be conducted within a week. AJAY DESHMUKH, registrar, MU