Teachers assn hails exemption from departmental exam

Tribune News Service

Shimla, July 14

The Himachal Government College Teachers’ Association (HGCTA) has expressed its gratitude to the state government for waiving the condition of departmental examination for pay bands II and III under the career advancement scheme.

In a statement issued here, association general secretary RL Sharma said the Education Department had put the unnecessary condition of departmental examination for awarding the higher scale under the scheme in 2012. However, it was against the UGC norms as the nature of the job of a college faculty was different from the administrative one.

Instead of the departmental examination, the UGC has put the condition of refresher and orientation courses for college and university teachers for awarding the scale under the scheme.

Sharma alleged that there were many issues which had also been misinterpreted by the bureaucracy such as withdrawal of incentive increments of higher qualifications of college teachers against the UGC norms.

The association alleged that a former Education/Finance Secretary, who himself was PhD holder, was not getting the inventive increments for higher qualification and he withdrew the benefits of hundreds of college teachers in the state. He passed the orders that no one would get the benefit of incentive increments after October 1, 2014.

“We urge the government to look into the matter and restore the arbitrary withdrawn benefits of incentive increments of higher qualifications (Mhil/PhD) as per the UGC norms,” said the association.