The Block Grant (BG) lecturers under 488 and 662 category of colleges in the State faced a jolt after a decision taken on their demand for grant-in-aid (GIA) by a high level committee just before the announcement of the schedule for the urban local bodies (UlBs) polls could not be made public because of the code of conduct.
After much dillydallying, the high level committee set up for deciding on several demands of the lecturers, including promotion of the State scale lecturers, GIA to the block grant lecturers and grant to the leftout colleges, had aggreed to provide the same block grant with an upward revision. However, some Ministers who are members of the committee did not approve the decision of the committee which was largely predominated by bureaucrats and hence did not sign on the draft.
Sources alleged that the Chief Minister had asked the committee to solve the problems of the college teachers who have been suffering for long years withoout suitable pay and amind uncertainties over their job. However, the bureaucrats who held sway in panel and have hardly understood the gravity of the situation for denying GIA to the teachers and its adverse impact on the education scenario in the State, stuck to providing block grant to the teachers except only making an upward revision in their paltry scale of pay.
What is more galling is that the committee, with the bureaucrats at the driver’s seat, took two days to arrive at a decision on the fate of the teachers without attaching primacy to the core issue. “The discontent among the aggrieved teachers’ fraternity has been growing as they have understood the very agenda of some bureaucrats not to allow them get GIA. When the meeting was held, unnecesary time was consumed over fringe issues,” alleged many teachers here, adding that the block grant teachers would hold a stir during the Monsoon Session of the Assembly to press for their just demands. 662 college teacher association’s Cuttack district president Ashok Parija told this paper that the district unit would hold a meeting on August 15 at Choudwar Women's College to chalk out their plan of agitation.