Education bandh complete

PATIALA, April 16: The staff and the managements of private college today observed education bandh even as Punjabi University announced r...

PATIALA, April 16: The staff and the managements of private college today observed education bandh even as Punjabi University announced re-scheduling of its undergraduate examinations, postponing them by a week.

On a call given by the Joint Action Committee, representatives of the managements, college principals, teachers and non-teaching employees held a massive rally outside the office of the Vice-Chancellor of the Punjabi University. Ashwani Kumar Sharma, general secretary of the Non-Government Colleges8217; Managements8217; Federation, claimed in a statement that over 5,000 delegates drawn from all the 164 colleges participated.

Sharma said that the Punjab government had not released salary grant of Rs 10 crore for the year 1997-98 and Rs 12 crore for 1998-99.

Speakers at the rally criticised the reported statement of Punjab Finance Minister Capt. Kanwaljit Singh that salary grant to aided-colleges would be reduced to zero-level in a phased manner.

Sharma said that the salary grant cannot be treated as a subsidy and hence no cut should have been imposed in the salary grant. The neighbouring state of Himachal Pradesh has kept education and health department out of the purview of subsidy and cut of grant. The private affiliated colleges are catering to the needs of higher education to 80 per cent of the students, whereas government colleges were catering to the needs of only 15 per cent students and universities to 5 per cent only.

Meanwhile, Punjabi University has rescheduled its undergraduate examinations. Slated to begin from April 17, the examinations would now begin from April 26. However, there has been no change in the date-sheet in respect of examinations which were originally fixed from April 26 onwards. Only those examinations which were to be held between April 17 and April 26, have been postponed and the dates for these would be communicated to the controllers of the examination centres later.

In a related development, on a call given by the Coordination Committee of University and College Teachers, the Punjab Government College Teachers8217; Association GCTA has decided to boycott the university examinations, commencing from next week, in protest against the incomplete notification regarding pay revision of teachers.

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Dr P.S. Bhatti, president of the association, said that the Punjab government had not even implemented its own decision regarding counting of past service and service in the reader grade, age of superannuation for university and college teachers and the payment of arrears.

A meeting of the executive committee of the GCTA has been called on April 20 at Mohindra College here, to chalk out further line of action if the Punjab government failed to a issue a revised notification by that time, Bhatti said.