While discussing the National Education Policy with media representatives today at the Karnataka State Higher Education Council's office, Dr C N Ashwath Narayan also spoke about filling the vacancies of college teachers in all the institutions across the state. He said, "Around 6,500 teacher or lecturers vacancies will be filled across the state. Besides the full-time teachers, we will require at least 8,000 guest lecturers and we will hire them so that our requirements are fulfilled in the institutions."
Contrary to the statement given by the Higher Education Minister, some of the guest lecturers teaching students in the ITI institutions in Karnataka have not been paid for more than a year and the reason for the non-payment of their salaries from the Higher Education Department is not known. Nagaveni M is part of the Government Industrial Training Institute Guest Faculty Committee and has been working as a government guest faculty in one of the government-run ITI institutions in Chikmagalur, says, "It has been more than a year that we haven't been given our salaries. The government has failed to pay us during the pandemic and even now when the colleges have started. We are paid a total of Rs 9,600 every quarter but this time, we haven't been given a single penny. In fact, we have to spend money from our pocket if we have to travel from one college to another."
There are 940 guest faculty appointed by the state government to teach in the government ITI colleges. "All these faculty are either qualified with different specialisations in Bachelors in Engineering or they have completed their diploma in various fields. They have even equipped themselves with AI, Coding, Machine Learning and other necessary courses. While some of these faculty members have been working for the past two years, a a majority of them have been working for as long as 20 years. With no income, we have held protests in 27 districts and have approached every department to submit our letter of request," added Nagaveni.
Shivakumar K V, another guest lecturer from Kolar says, "Recently, we have started to work as construction workers and even in agricultural land to earn our daily wages. Such is the condition. The ITI institutions come under the Department of Industrial Training and Employment. but it comes under the wing of the Higher Education Minister. Hence, today, we have made a request to the minister in the form of a letter to provide us our salaries. But he just made a passing comment that he will look into the issue and walked away. Even during the pandemic, the government college faculty got Rs 5,000 in the form of relief funds. We are only demanding for a little money and not in lakhs or crores."
