HYDERABAD: The New Year began on a sour note for around 1,300 employees spread across nine states and one UT of Hyderabad- based Maulana Azad National Urdu University (MANUU), as the university informed them that it does not have money to pay their salaries due to lack of funds from the University Grants Commission (UGC). University’s coffers from internal resources have also dried up, as it has been using that money to offset deficit in funding by UGC to university, for the past six to seven months. When contacted, MANUU Vice-Chancellor Dr Mohammad Aslam Parvaiz told Express, that while university requires more than Rs 8 crore a month for payment of salaries to its staff, UGC has been releasing just about 70 per cent of the required amount for the past six to seven months.
As a result, the university has been forced to pay around Rs 30 crore from its internal resources, to offset this deficit in funds, he said. Dr Parvaiz said, “As we have been using funds from our internal resources over the past few months for payment of salaries, we have exhausted even that. Full salaries for the month of January can only be paid if UGC releases the entire amount. If it releases only part of the amount again, we can release only half of everyone’s salaries as we do not have any more internal resources left.”
When asked about steps being taken on the issue, he said despite writing several letters to the UGC and HRD ministry highlighting the issue, he did not receive any reply. It was recently highlighted in these columns how MANUU had released a circular that it will not be able to provide Non-National Eligibility Test (Non-NET) fellowships for PhD scholars due to lack of funds from UGC. The university was also forced to take a loan of Rs 80 crore from HEFA.