CHENNAI: The University of Madras is likely to come to a standstill on Friday as all its staff will likely go on a strike after the varsity failed to pay salaries for the month of February on Thursday, owing to the ongoing financial crisis.
However, the university administration was hopeful that the bank accounts of the university frozen by the I-T department will be unlocked by Friday noon and they will be able to pay salaries. “We met the chief commissioner of income tax on Thursday and he has assured us that our accounts will be de-freezed on Friday. We can file an appeal against the tax notice before the Central Board of Direct Taxes. We also tried to convince the staff to call off of their strike,” said a source at the varsity.
Over 800 employees including faculty members, administrative staff, guest lecturers, house keeping staff and security guards will participate in the strike and not join duty, which will paralyse the varsity and affect the students adversely. Members of the joint action committee of teaching and non-teaching staff associations at the university said the decision was taken to make their demands loud and clear to the state government.
“The state government’s attitude towards the premier state university is unfair. They should immediately provide funds to the university for payment of salaries. Without its financial support, its difficult for the university to pay the salaries as it doesn’t have money at all, except the corpus fund and we don’t want the varsity to break the corpus fund,” said a member of the association.
“The corpus fund is the only saving the university has. The university is already utilising interest from the corpus fund to pay pensions and if it starts paying salary from it, then it will be very difficult for the varsity to survive. We want the state government’s intervention in the matter,” said PK Abdul Rahiman, secretary of Teachers’ Collective at the university.
The university’s ailing financial state of affairs was dealt a severe blow recently when the I-T department froze more than 50 bank accounts for not paying pending tax dues. The department had demanded `424 crore as tax on grounds that the university cannot be considered a government university as the state government’s contribution to the funds was less than 50% since 2016-17. The department has already deducted `12.5 crore from the university’s frozen accounts.
Usually, the employees receive their salary by noon on the last day of the month, but on Thursday salary was not credited into their bank accounts following which joint action committee of teaching and non-teaching staff associations of the university called an urgent meeting and it was unanimously decided to go on a strike.