Date:07/10/2008 URL: http://www.thehindu.com/2008/10/07/stories/2008100754070400.htm

New Delhi

Teachers criticise pay review report

Staff Reporter

NEW DELHI: The Democratic Teachers’ Front feels that the recommendations of the Pay Review Committee set up by the University Grants Commission to revise the pay scales and service conditions of teachers have “failed to reflect its objective of reversing the flight of talent from the teaching profession”.

Pointing out some of the proposals in the report submitted by the G. K. Chadha Committee to the UGC, Front secretary Rajeev Kumar Kunwar said: “The much touted higher entry pay recommended by the committee is only 5 per cent more (a grade pay of Rs.6,600 compared with Rs.5,400 in the pay band). This higher entry soon gets wiped out with slower and fewer promotions.”

‘Downgraded’

“The college teachers have been downgraded by denying them promotion till the professor’s grade, thereby making college teaching very unattractive despite the rhetoric of knowledge society. The insistence on Ph.D. as the eligibility condition for the third promotion excludes a large number of teachers,” he charged.

The Front has demanded that the UGC carefully review the report. “The Reader’s grade must be placed in pay band IV and all those who have completed six years in the grade as on January 1, 2006, should be fixed at the senior associate professor grade. Also, the third promotion should be open for all teachers,” the Front said in a statement on Monday.