‘Give 6th pay commission benefits to professors’

Various posts, including those of senior professors, have been lying vacant in the 14 government engineering colleges, three grant-in-aid engineering colleges and four pharmacy colleges, for a long time, thanks to the faulty policy of the state government, said Congress leader Manish Doshi here on Sunday.

"Out of the 14 government engineering colleges, only four have permanent principals and over 50% of the posts are lying vacant. The lecturers working in these colleges are yet to get the benefits of the sixth pay commission," said Doshi, who is Congress spokesperson and a syndicate member of the Gujarat University.

"The state government's indecisiveness and lack of administrative skills are responsible for such a situation. As many as 2,100 posts of class two professors are lying vacant, and the government has been doing nothing about it. Some actions were taken recently only after a court order," he said. Doshi further alleged that the government is trying to demolish the structure of grant-in-aid and government institutes. "The number of such institutes is going down. Incidentally, these are the places that the middle class families send their children to," Doshi said.

Pointing out that the government has failed to set up any grant-in-aid or pharmacy college in the past ten years, Doshi added that the number of self-financed colleges has shot up during the period. "All this due to the inconsistent policies of the government," the Congress leader said.

Meanwhile, the Congress has demanded that professors and other employees of the government engineering and pharmacy colleges be given the benefits of the sixth pay commission at the earliest.