Guest lecturers to get their dues but no word on filling vacant teacher posts

The Tamil Nadu Higher Education Department has issued an order releasing funds to pay guest lecturers their dues. The decision would cover 2,423 teachers who were appointed as guest lecturers in the government arts and science and teacher education colleges in the State.

The guest lecturers will be paid ₹15,000 a month due to them since April. According to the Government Order, 1,623 guest lecturers in men’s arts and science colleges; 760 teachers in women’s colleges; 25 lecturers in men’s teacher education colleges; and 13 in women’s teacher education colleges will benefit.

“The lecturers have been working since April without pay. We were told to employ them for evaluation and internal assessments. But how can we extract work from them without giving them payment? The government cited (the COVID-19) lockdown as the reason. We had been repeatedly pointing out that they have lost their livelihood due to the pandemic,” said an office bearer of the Tamil Nadu Government College Teachers Association (TNGCTA).

The GO, issued on Tuesday, cited a letter from the department the College Education director that at the start of the academic year 2019-20 there were 3,443 vacancies. The government had said that it would not be able to fill vacancies at present and permitted the colleges to appoint guest lecturers to continue the teaching-learning processes.

Government college teachers blame the DCE for not conducting the transfer counselling last year. With around 70-80 more teachers retiring the number of vacancies has also increased in arts and science colleges.

TNGCTA members point out that they had been repeatedly appealing to the government to appoint faculty to the posts that fell vacant following retirement of existing faculty. There was some relief when earlier this year the government increasing the retirement age by a year. The number of those who retired fell marginally. However, this number would go up next year, they add.

There is yet no word about filling vacancies in constituent colleges that the government took over. When the government takes over the rest of the 24 constituent colleges more vacancies would arise as new posts would be created, the members say.

Meanwhile, the government has started seven more colleges this academic year but there has been no mention of faculty appointment. When the government creates posts in these colleges another 70-80 vacancies would arise, said T. Veeramani, general secretary of the Association.