The state government’s move to issue a notification for recruitment of 4,523 junior lecturers stirred up a hornet’s nest as it has invited the ire of the aspirants as well as those already working on contract basis in government junior colleges for 15 years.
A delegation of MLCs Y Srinivasulu Reddy, KS Lakshmana Rao, M Geyanand, V Balasubramanyam and others met chief secretary PK Mohanty on behalf of contract lecturers at the Secretariat here on Tuesday demanding that the government continue the services of contract lecturers.
The MLCs were told by the chief secretary and finance secretary PV Ramesh, who was also present there, that the chief minister was firm on recruitment of 4,523 JLs. If the government goes ahead with the recruitment, an almost equal number of contract lecturers working in government colleges will become unemployed.
Speaking to Express, Contract Lecturers’ Association general secretary K Suresh said that they would not allow the government to remove even a single contract lecturer and would even go on strike crippling the functioning of government colleges.
Job aspirants from Osmania University say that they too will oppose issuance of a notification for recruitment of only 4,523 JLs and demand that all the 8,400 contract posts be declared vacant and filled up afresh. Now the total number of vacancies is said to have crossed 10,000.
There are 824 government junior colleges in the state and 13,000 sanctioned posts. But only 4,600 junior lecturers are working on regular rolls and 8,400 on contract basis depending on each year’s requirement.
While contract lecturers demand status quo and their retention in job till retirement, the freshers seeking to enter service demand that all the 8,400 contract posts be notified as vacant and fresh recruitment made, saying that the colleges did not follow the rule of reservation and roster point system while filling the posts.
But contract lecturers argue that they have been serving as teachers for 15 years even on a starting salary as meagre as `5,000 a month and worked for the improvement of Intermediate education in the state. Saying that most of them have already crossed the upper age limit to apply for other jobs, they want the government to maintain the status quo on humanitarian grounds.
In early 2011, after Kiran Kumar Reddy took over as chief minister, the government had cleared the file on recruiting 5,700 junior lecturers but did not go ahead in the face of opposition from contract lecturers and job aspirants for diametrically opposite stances.
Though the cabinet sub-committee, constituted about two years ago to look into the matter, favoured retention of the contract lecturers, chief minister N Kiran Kumar Reddy is firm on issuance of a notification for recruiting 4,523 junior lecturers.
