Banks give nightmares to private teachers as salaries play truant

Hyderabad: It is one of its kind of classic case that showcases how people have to face lathis, bundled into police vans or get stamped and end up in the courtrooms for the failure of the government authorities to act in time.

Dr Vijaya Lakshmi (name changed), a senior faculty member at a private engineering college in the city has been struggling to clear loans taken from banks based on salary she draws. The college in which she has been working has not cleared the salary dues for the several months and whenever it did, she was paid only half the salary with no fixed date once in 45 to 60 days.

"The college management has been citing that it has not got the fee reimbursement from the State government and hence not in a position to pay the salaries. When pressing for salaries, many were shown the door," she said.

"My husband and I have taken hand loans from friends and relatives to pay the school fee of our kid. We also had to sell the last gold chain left in the house to make part payment of fee to admit our elder daughter in an engineering college," she rued, adding that the third party agents of the banks were now giving nightmares to her. She wanted to restructure her pending loan. However, the banks were insisting on clearing the pending EMIs first to avail the same. Vijaya Lakshmi's case is not alone as tens and thousands of teaching and non-teaching staff working in about 180-engineering, pharmacy and management colleges in the State are facing similar issues.

Speaking to The Hans India, A Santosh Kumar from Telangana Schools Technical Colleges Employees Association (TSTCEA) said, "The claims of private engineering, pharmacy, management and few other colleges is a lie. We have a credible information that the State government had released fee reimbursement for the academic year 2019-20. Except a very few, funds were released to all the colleges. Particularly in the case of SC, ST students, the fee reimbursement was cleared in full," he added.

"When the lecturers are staging protests, the police is called in to act against for asking salaries for the work they have done. Sometimes we are even slapped with cases," he lamented.

Part-time instructor Kanukuntla Krishna Hari said, "About 2,600 of us have been working since 2012 teaching physical education, art, craft etc. We are paid Rs 9,000 per month as against Rs 14,500 paid to our counterparts teaching other subjects. Also, only for 10 months as against the Sarva Siksha Abhiyan guidelines to pay for 12 months. We are not receiving even Rs 9,000 as we are not engaged in the last seven months. It is forcing several of us to take up odd jobs to pay our EMIs or local chit installments to clear the loans," he added.

Telangana Private Teachers' Forum (TPTF) State president Sheikh Shabbir Ali said coming under severe financial constraints, some of the teachers were resorting to panic borrowing irrespective of the interest rates to clear their pending dues. But, non-payment of salaries making them unable to repay the loans. The humiliation being met out at the hands of collection agents is taking a toll on teachers, their social standing and reputation. Not able to bear the financial crisis due to non-payment of salaries about 20 teachers have ended their lives.