Telangana: University staff plea to hike retirement age

Warangal: The demand for increasing the retirement age of teaching staff in the State universities is growing especially since the government had enhanced the superannuation of the employees from 58 to 61 years. As of now, the retirement age of university teachers is 60 years. They want the government to increase it to 65 years.

Representing the Federation of University Teachers Association of Telangana State (FUTATS), former SDLCE Director (Kakatiya University) Prof Guguloth Veeranna, Prof Ch Venkatramana Devi (Osmania University) and Prof B Venkateshwara Rao (JNTU Hyderabad) have on Thursday met the Governor Tamilisai Soundararajan and urged her to use her good offices in enhancing the superannuation age of university faculty from 60 years to 65 years as per UGC guidelines, and retrospective effect from March 2021.

The FUTATS contended that several universities including Central and State have increased the retirement age to 65 years. Stating that all the State universities have been staff crunch, the association urged the Governor to recommend the increase in retirement age. It may be noted here that together the varsities have just 37 per cent of sanctioned strength.

"The enhancement of retirement age would be beneficial to the students since it results in continued quality education. It also helps varsities in getting research grants/projects from UGC, DST, CSIR, RUSA and other funding agencies. It's also difficult for the varsities to get good grades by NAAC or NIRF if the varsities are without required faculty," Prof Veeranna said.

The TSCHE-appointed Committee headed by Tirupathi Rao, former VC of OU, to study the retirement age in 2017 also recommended the enhancement from 60 years to 65 years.