BENGALURU: Guest lecturers at Bangalore University (BU) are the latest victims of personnel shortage due to deployment for the Special Intensive Revision (SIR) duty, with many of them yet to receive the salaries owed to them. Until Tuesday (August 25), a section of guest lecturers had not received two months’ worth of compensation, for June and July; after TNIE contacted BU officials on Tuesday morning for an explanation, the guest lecturers received their salaries for June, almost two months after the due date.
It is to be noted that at the time of writing, the guest lecturers are yet to receive their compensations for July, and harbour significant doubts about the salaries meant for August. A spokesperson from the university, when contacted by TNIE when even June’s compensations had not been transacted yet, claimed that payments had been cleared on the Friday of August 21. “Most of our employees who work in the administration department are engaged with SIR duty, which is why we have failed to transact salaries on time, but they have been cleared,” they said.
Sushma (name changed to protect anonymity), who holds a doctorate, rued that she and her colleagues were more qualified than the university’s regular teaching staff, and yet were the preferential discriminated victims of the situation. “Whenever we have gone to enquire to the administration department, they have told us that our salaries would be credited in a couple of days; we have been kept in the dark,” she said.
Sushma’s ordeal as a guest lecturer whose marital partner earns and contributes to the family as well, despite being harsh, pales in comparison to the situations faced by many of her colleagues who are the sole breadwinners of their respective families. “I am struggling to pay rent and medical expenses, and have already had to take credit from people, who refuse to provide any more loans now. I have two children, one of whom is an infant. I am worried sick thinking that I would be incapable of paying one’s school fees, and procuring essentials for the other’s medical needs,” Hiran (name changed to protect anonymity), a guest lecturer at BU, lamented.
Another guest lecturer was himself stricken with a medical emergency, with June and July’s salaries still unpaid to him. “I had to undergo a small surgery. Penniless, I could not afford a private hospital; the government hospital I visited made me wait three days. I struggled through July (with June’s salary not having been credited), but August has been unbearable,” he said.