New Delhi, Mar 27 (IANS): The Delhi University Teachers Association (DUTA) on Monday urged the university's Vice-Chancellor to initiate the process of granting permanent status to hundreds of ad-hoc and temporary teachers.
"Despite being experienced, academically sound and possessing the required qualifications of an Assistant Professor, these teachers have been left to work on ad-hoc/temporary basis for several years, simply because Delhi University (DU) arbitrarily stopped holding interviews for regular appointments," DUTA President Nandita Narain said in a letter to Vice Chancellor Yogesh Tyagi.
She underlined the plight of these teachers -- around 4,500 or almost 50 per cent across Delhi UNiversity colleges -- being deprived of benefits such as "increments, leave, career enhancement, medical reimbursement and above all, a life of dignity".
Also pointed out in the letter was the illegal status of these appointments which, according to Statutes under the Delhi University Act, cannot be extended beyond four months and constitute more than 10 per cent of the total faculty members.
Although the university advertised about 300 vacancies in February for faculty members, these are not going to ease the situation much for the ad-hoc and temporary teachers since the openings were for university departments, whereas the affected teachers are employed majorly in colleges.
"These teachers are suffering a lot and are being denied their legitimate rights. The VC doesn't meet us and when he meets, he doesn't talk about the issues," DUTA Vice President C.S. Rawat told IANS.
Sensing a bigger pattern behind the non-regularisation of these teachers, Rawat explained that it could be because of the government's intention to privatise the university gradually, after which teachers would be hired only on contractual basis.
"The process of absorption (of ad-hocs into permanent) started by previous VC (Dinesh Singh) was aborted by Tyagi soon after his appointment in 2016," Rawat said.
"There are teachers in the Executive Council who are card-carrying members of the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), never raise this issue and just toe the party line. Teachers are suffering badly because of all this," the DUTA Vice President added.