Punjabi varsity in severe fiscal crisis

Gagan K Teja

Tribune News Service

Patiala, August 10

Punjabi University is facing its worst-ever fiscal crisis. The university authorities have failed to release the salary of teachers despite the fact that the university is almost done with its admission process, which is the main source of revenue for the university.

The situation is so grim in the very first month of the new academic session that the authorities are now in a fix as to how they are going to manage their expenses in the coming months. There are about 2,200 employees, including regular, contractual and ad-hoc staff, and 1,350 pensioners whose total expenses comes out to be about Rs 25 crore per month.

However, the cash-strapped university has failed to make their payments following which the contractual staff working in all its constituent colleges have boycotted work. 

Teachers working in the University College of Engineering and the Department of Management Studies have also given an ultimatum to boycott all classes from August 11 if their salary was not released.

The information gathered by The Tribune shows that the university has already exhausted all money it has collected as admission fee from students. The money was not even enough to bear its basic expenses considering that the admission in various courses on the campus and its neighbourhood campuses, regional centres and constituency colleges have gone down drastically that has come as a big blow to the university.

All these institutions are running into loses worth crores, including Rs 77 crore retirement benefits of superannuated employees, about Rs 153 crore for its off campuses, and to top it all, the university has already overdrafted Rs 80 crore from bank to meet its expenses.

One of the senior officials requesting anonymity said the university urgently needed over Rs 250 crore to bail out the university from its current mess and even if this amount was granted, there was no respite in sight in the coming months.

Meanwhile, Punjabi University finance officer Baljeet Singh Sidhu said the officials were helpless since the salaries had gone really high and our revenue had decreased due to drop in admissions.