GCTA plans stir on early release of UGC grades

In a press statement, P. S. Bhatti, president of the association, said that the state council had decided to endorse the call given by AIFUCTO to press for the early release of new UGC grades. The Punjab GCTA would participate in the march and dharna to be held at New Delhi on July 21 in front of UGC Bhavan. All lecturers of government colleges would take a mass casual leave on that day to reach New Delhi.

In the second phase, all government college lecturers would wear black badges and hold group rallies on August 4 to mobilize the lecturers for the third phase of agitation, in which an indefinite stay-in-strike would be observed from August 11.

In another resolution, the state council took a serious note of the “anti-teacher decision” of the Punjabi University to impose heavy fines on teachers performing duty of evaluation of answer books for “petty clerical mistakes”. On the other hand, in case of university employees, two per cent mistakes of similar nature have been exempted from such penalties. The university had earlier debarred about 25 lecturers from the university work.

Bhatti urged the Punjab government to raise the retirement age of government college lecturers to 60 years, to grant previous service benefit to senior and selection grade, and issue necessary orders and notifications regarding the two already accepted demands of readers’ designation to all the selection grade lecturers and generalisation of High Court order granting increments to teachers having Ph.D and M.Phil qualifications, who were recruited between 1986 to 1989.

Bhatti said that the teaching community was at a loss not only due to the delay in the new UGC grades, but also because two installments of DA which were due in July 1997 and January 1998 were yet to be released in the case of college teachers in unrevised grades.