Colleges finding it difficult to pay salaries to staff

Fee reimbursement dues of 2016-17 yet to be released by State government

Members of Joint Action Committee of private engineering colleges staff demanding increase in salary.

The rollout of several schemes by the Government for various sections of the society has now infused some confidence among the college managements to seek fee reimbursement dues of the previous academic year.

The Government is yet to release the fee reimbursement dues of academic year 2016-17 and colleges, particularly private Intermediate, Degree and PG institutions are unable to cope with the overheads. “The 2017-18 academic year is halfway through, but we are yet to get our 2016-17 dues,” says Gauri Satish, Secretary of Telangana Private Colleges Managements Association.

The pending dues amount to ₹ 620 crore pertaining to 9.8 lakh students and indirectly related to 1.35 lakh employees working in 1,265 private intermediate colleges, 1,055 degree and 215 PG colleges. “With the Dasara festival around, employees are demanding us pending salaries of several months and it is embarrassing for us,” reveals Mr. Satish.

The managements say when the Government can spend more than ₹ 200 crore for Bathukamma sarees and a few hundreds of crores for distributing sheep, why are the students being denied their due. They say earlier at least 50% of fee reimbursement used to be released before December and the remaining by March.

To pressurise the Government, the college managements now plan to go on a State-wide stir as that is the only option left with them. Mr. Satish claims that they had represented their problems on fee dues to the IT Minister K.T. Rama Rao. In fact, the government issued orders releasing ₹ 400-odd crores under fee reimbursement scheme last month for all the colleges including engineering colleges, but the Finance Department has not cleared it citing lack of funds.

A senior member of the managements association following the issue says the Finance officials are turning them away, saying they were worried over delay in disbursal of government employees salaries. “If they are worried about their salaries being delayed by a day, what about us who are unable to pay salaries for several months?,” he asked.

The managements appealed to the Government to understand their plight and expedite the release of funds.