The Directorate of Higher Education seems to be in the eye of a storm as a number of teaching and nonteaching staffs of the Shantilata Mahavidyalaya, Uitikiri, Baleswar, have come out with grievous charges of corruption, nepotism, irregularities, anomalies and discrepancies against officers of the directorate and babus of the State Secretariat in the Department of Higher Education.
It is leant from sources that crores of rupees has been siphoned away from the public exchequer since June 1, 1988. Eleven teaching and nonteaching staffs of the college have received windfall amounts of money. A 15-year-old person and a 16-year-old person were shown as the employees of the college.
The repeated prayers, petitions and protests of the bonafide members of the teaching and nonteaching staffs of the college have fallen on the deaf ears of the Government as Babus of the Higher Education Department at the Secretariat are hands in glove with those of the Directorate of Higher Education. The illegal staffs of the college are rolling themselves in luxury while the genuine ones are suffering. To make the matters worse, it is reliably learnt that appointment orders have been issued in the name of a ghost person, who practically was never the secretary of the college.
Senior faculty members like Prof Ratikanta Panda and Prof Bijayinee Panda told this correspondent, “We have brought all these facts before the Higher Education Minister, Principal Secretary GK Dhal, Director Prof NR Pattanayak, Additional Director AK Mohanty, Deputy Director Dr SK Pattanayak and Regional Director Dr Debabrata Mohanty, but they maintained that the salaries have been distributed to the persons on conditional basis and on the threat of contempt of court.
The striking members are sitting half-fed and poorly clad under a temporary shed at the lower PMG and are determined to continue the dharna till the unholy racketeering and poisonous nexus in the Department of Higher Education come an end.