In a major initiative the Higher Education Directorate has submitted the draft of the transfer policy for the academic and non-academic staff of the Government colleges to the State Government. The functioning and the transfers of the college teachers is a perennial issue of controversy as the department lacks a proper transfer policy.
The Director of Higher Education Jagdish Prasad told The Pioneer that the department has sent a draft for the proposed transfer policy. He said that like government schools the colleges of the state would also be divided into accessible and inaccessible area categories. Prasad said that the distance of college from railway station is kept as one of the major factor for determination the category of a college.
The department has suggested that those colleges which are situated at a distance of more than 20 km from the nearest railway station should be put in the inaccessible area category. As per this criterion 22 colleges of state would come under accessible area category while 65 remaining colleges located in the mountainous areas would fall in the inaccessible area category.
The Director higher education further informed that the proposed transfer policy envisages that the a college teacher posted for five years in inaccessible area would be eligible for transfer in a college located in the accessible area. Similarly a teacher located in the accessible area would require a service of 10 years to be eligible for transfer. There are 87 functional and 90 sanctioned government degree colleges in the state. These colleges are affiliated under HNB Garhwal University and Kumaon University. The department has 1656 sanctioned posts of teachers out of which 971 posts are lying vacant. The department is taking services of 408 contractual lecturers to fill the big gap in required and available number of teachers.