DU teachers unable to pay loans and fees owing to financial hardships

"We taught the kids in the university, but the education of our kids is in peril," said Deepika Sharma, ad-hoc teacher of Sanskrit at Gargi College. Similar to her, thousands of teaching and non-teaching staff across Delhi University colleges are facing financial hardship because of the delay in their salary. Deepika claimed that around four hundred teaching and non-teaching staff are facing a similar economic crisis because of this delay. "Most of the teachers are in heavy debt, they are unable to pay their loans and school fee for their education. Despite raising this issue with the college principal, we did not receive an assured response from their side," added Deepika, as stated in a report by The New Indian Express.

Explaining the reason behind this delay, Nandita Narain, a professor at the university, said, "Earlier, the Central government-funded colleges received their grant from the University Grant Commission (UGC), but after 2020, the disbursal procedures changed." There are more than a dozen colleges facing a similar crisis, the list includes Dyal Singh College, Zakir Husain Delhi College, Ramanujan College, Rajdhani College and others. Adding to this, several teachers also complained about the pension and medical reimbursement. The condition is worse in Delhi-government colleges as their teachers have not received a single penny for four months.

In order to raise the issue of salary delay, the teachers of Maharaja Agrasen College, University of Delhi on Friday, January 27, organised a shoe polish dharna outside the college gate to protest against the Delhi government for non-payment of salaries for the last four months. Bhupinder Choudhary, Professor at Maharaja Agrasen College, said that this problem is not new, but it has been aggravated. "The Delhi government and Central government, both are anti-education. They are only disbursing eight months' salary in an annual year."

Now, you can imagine, how will we manage our family expenses, added Choudhary. There are a total of 12 colleges at Delhi University, which come under the Delhi government colleges, as reported by The New Indian Express.