It is a bad decision. The downgrading of academic arrangement contractual lecturers to a ‘guest lecturer’ and thereby scuttling their prospects of earning a decent income is indeed a great injustice with these talented qualified people. The recently issued order entails drastic reduction in their salaries, slashing their incomes from Rs.28000 per month to a mere Rs.12000 to Rs.13000 per month. This is gross injustice with these talented youth who have made great efforts to keep the education scenario afloat in the colleges and universities of the valley at lesser salary.
This arrangement was in place because of the cash crunch which ensured that bulk recruitment of lecturers in higher education could not happen. So, these contractual lecturers were hired to keep the scene moving, to give qualitative lessons to our undergraduates and at the same time the administration could retain its ‘spend-another-day’ policy intact. In some women’s colleges of the valley, it was reported that a section of the permanent faculty would sit in separate staff rooms and completely avoid meeting these contractual lecturers. In most of the colleges even the layout of lecturers was altered and majority of the classes were given by contractual lecturers only. These contractual lecturers were exploited in more than one way and they would abide by every dictation of the permanent staff as they feared their contract may not be extended next year.
Even after suffering from humiliation after humiliation these contractual lecturers kept moving ahead teaching with utmost dedication without ever being grumpy about the peanuts they were getting in salary. However, the downgrading to guest lecturer would be too much to take even for them. Most of these contractual lecturers live away from college and have to take private transport to reach colleges and universities incurring a substantial expense. Then to teach for multiple hours non-stop and abide by every written or oral dictate of college administration – all this for a paltry salary of Rs.12000. The government seriously needs to rethink this.
Teachers are the most important pillars of society. They need to be treated with utmost respect. More than respect they need to be paid well so that they are able to meet their expenses with dignity.
