Rajahmundry: Assistant professors working on contract basis in all 14 universities across the state are on the warpath against state government for failing to fulfil their demands like fixing a time scale and ensuring job security. They allege that though the state government issued G.O. MS. No. 12 dated January 28, 2019, it failed to mention anything about them.
They say that state government constituted a four-member committee, led by a retired IAS officer D.S. Venkata Ratnam, to submit a report about assistant professors working on co-ntract basis in all universities across the state and later a three-member gro-up of ministers, led by minister for finance Yanamala Ramakrishnudu, was constituted to study the report of the committee and come up with recommendations to state government. There is no progress on the issue despite this, they said.
All assistant professors working on contract basis are getting ready to stage a stir against state government. Nearly 500 of them from 14 universities in the state are going to arrive at Amaravati to meet the minister for human resources development and higher education, Ganta Srinivasa Rao, at Gannavaram airport in the morning and later in the afternoon, they plan to meet Chief Minister N. Chandrababu Naidu at the Secretariat as an interaction is schedul-ed to be held on February 5 with degree lecturers and junior college lecturers working on contract basis. They are hopeful of getting an appointment with the CM to press for resolving their issues. Their list of demands include fixing a minimum time scale, ensuing job security up to 62 years, maternity leave for six months and others.
AP Universities Contract Assistant Professors’ Ass-ociation state general-secretary Dr Malli Bhaskar said, “We are very disapp-ointed at how state gover-nment is failing to take a decision on our issue for a long time. We are trying to meet the minister for HRD and also the CM to seek th-eir intervention to resolve our issue expeditiously.”
Sources say that even as the state Cabinet reportedly accepted the recommendations from the GoM and a direction was issued to the department concerned to issue an order, no order has been issued so far.
