Punjab: On February 26, 2010, about 190 private colleges of Punjab will observe an 'education bandh' (strike), on the call of the Joint Action Committee (JAC), which represents their faculty, principals and stakeholders. S.C. Sanwalka, President of the JAC, said that the Punjab government is quite reluctant to meet our demands. If things continue in the same manner, in the next one or two years closure of many private colleges is inevitable.
As per sources, JAC was constituted last month by the private colleges management federation of Punjab and Chandigarh, federation of associations of college principals and teachers' union (Punjab and Chandigarh) to draw the attention of the Punjab government towards the increasing problems of private colleges in the state.
Jagwant Singh, General Secretary of the JAC, said that despite their repeated reminders, the Punjab government has not done anything for the welfare of teaching and non-teaching staff of private colleges. He also added that in the last six months, they have submitted various memorandums, highlighting their demands, to Chief Minister Parkash Singh Badal, but have not received any satisfactory reply for the same.
As a result, they have now decided to go for a complete 'education bandh' in all (private) colleges of the state and to bring out a protest rally in Chandigarh on February 26. Representatives of all the affected colleges will participate in this protest rally. Further, he said that JAC was demanding that the ban on recruitment of teaching and non-teaching posts, imposed in July 2005, be lifted immediately.
According to Mr Singh, presently, 1,700 teaching posts and 1,000 non-teaching posts are lying vacant and 2,500 teachers are working on contract basis in the state. There is a faculty deficit of nearly 50 per cent in the state. The JAC was also demanding an instant release of grants, which the government had freezed in 1999-2000 and some part of which was released after 2006. Still many colleges are reeling under huge financial crunch. They are not able to give salaries to their staff, resulting in recruitment of sub-standard faculty at very low wages.
