Karnataka PU lecturers threaten to boycott evaluation if demands not fulfilled

Time and again, the pre-university lecturers have placed their demands and have spoken against the unfair way the government has been dealing with them. But none of the governments has responded to their demands yet and they have been largely ignored. Yesterday, around 20,000 pre-university lecturers across Karnataka participated in the protest and submitted a memorandum to the District Commissioners (DC) in particular districts. The memorandum consists of 21 different demands and the lecturers have stressed on the increment in their salaries and gradual deduction of ex-gratia money from their salaries. They have also mentioned that if these demands are not fulfilled, then they will boycott the evaluation of the PUC examination in the year 2020.

SR Venkatesh, Vice President, Karnataka Pre-University Lecturers Association (KPULA) who lead the protest today, says, "Our demands include rectifying the pay scale of lecturers across all the colleges including government and aided,  promotion for the lecturers who have served in the department for 10 years or more than that, forming a committee to solve the issues of workload among PU lecturers. Since Science is a practical subject, the total work hours for these lecturers are fixed for 16 hours per week. For non-practical subjects like Math, the number of hours per week is around 20 hours which is unscientific and inhuman. And most of the times, we are deputed to other colleges to teach though there is enough strength on the assumption that we have less workload. Another demand is the appointment of principals in 600 colleges where the posts are vacant. There should be limited strength in the class. According to the rules of NCERT, every class should have a maximum of 40 students but in most of the classes, there are more than 40 students which leads to more workload."

Stressing on how the consecutive governments have harassed them for ex-gratia money, he says, “According to the directions from the state government, the ex-gratia money of Rs 500 paid to the lecturers every month appointed after August 2008 should be repaid to the government. But we have suggested to the government that repaying the ex-gratia money all at once will be a financial burden for many lecturers. Hence, we demand that the government deduct it from our salaries every month so that the money paid by the government to lecturers gets repaid. We have also demanded that the lecturers who have completed PhD, passed SLET and NET exams to be promoted and posted to the degree colleges."