Teachers up in arms against ill-treatment at NITC

KOZHIKODE: The National Institute of Technology, Calicut (NITC) which has been in the news for oppressive attitude against students recently is now allegedly treating non-teaching staff based on outdated rules and service patterns of the REC era. REC was promoted as NIT in 2004 and the staff strength and criteria for appointments of faculty re-fixed as per the national pattern under human resources department ministry. But, even after more than a decade, the administrative structure and service conditions of non-teaching staff are yet to be fully converted into NIT pattern creating much disappointment among them.

A recent circular of NITC administrative office (dated October 4) says that the competent authority has decided to consider granting promotions to the vacant positions of non-teaching staff. For this purpose, a departmental promotion committee has been constituted. The vacant posts are identified as per the REC pattern. The circular also urges the candidates willing to be considered for promotion to apply mentioning the current position and post to which promotion is sought.

Pushed to the wall even after many representations, they are now seeking the intervention of human resources minister Prakash Javadekar and chairperson of the institution Aruna Jayanthi. The NIT Staff Association in a memorandum to the Union minister said repeated denial of prayers by the authorities and undue delay in restructuring the service conditions and administrative procedures as per the NIT standards results in growing distrust and despair among the staff.

“Moves are afoot to fix scales of some staff by promoting them on a par with REC pattern to abolished posts relaxing criteria while denying the same for majority staff is discriminatory,” it said. “This is happening while most of the qualified staff in the NITC are not permitted even to apply for such posts.”