JAC’s demand for new pension scheme, salary hike called for protest

CHENNAI 24 Feb : Teachers and non-teaching staff of government colleges staged a protest near Madras Christian College here today, demanding implementation of promotion rules.

The Joint Action Council of College Teachers (JAC) and non-teaching staff have been protesting for three years now with their charter of demands.

R Ravichandran, General Secretary of the JAC, Tamil Nadu, said, We have been protesting in different places with our demands. But they are always left unnoticed.”

JAC’s Demands

Teachers appointed at the college level after 2006, as per the rule, are supposed to be promoted after every four years. Ravichandran notes,” By now, the professors of university colleges would have been promoted twice if the government had followed the law strictly.”

The JAC’s fight to bring on a defined pension scheme and to withdraw the old scheme, implemeted by the AIADMK, for a better and guaranteed pension.

In 2013, the JAC had protested for raising the retirement age of college teachers to 65, as recommended by the UGC.

Today’s protest was also to press the state government to recruit teachers against the 1,244 vaccancies. R. Ravichandran said,” There is a lot of burden on the faculty as the work is shared among the teachers. In addition to this, they are paid less.”

According to the Tamil Nadu Private College Regulation Act, 1976, the new recruits must be paid around Rs 40,000. The General Secretary also pointed out, “ These teachers here are paid somewhere between Rs 2,500 to Rs 15,000. We demand for a minimum pay scale of Rs 25,000.”

Another demand was a defined fee structure for both self-aided colleges and other universities.

The protest would be held for the next three days and if there is no response from the government, the JAC would call for a strike, warned R. Ravichandran