Around 140 teachers in Government engineering colleges affiliated to Anna University have reportedly been working without the due pay hike for the past five months despite being promoted.
They have made several appeals to the higher education secretary to release the hike due to them.
The teachers said the Directorate of Technical Education denied the pay fixation due to them following complaints that some of those promoted did not have a Ph.D degree.
Those without Ph.D qualification include a faculty each in Electrical and Electronics, Electronics and Communication department and three in Computer Science Engineering department. As many as 27 faculty in Civil Engineering, 36 in Mechanical, 25 in EEE, 12 in ECE, 17 in CSE, 10 in Physics, eight in Chemistry and five teachers in English departments have been promoted as associate professors.
According to the affected teachers, of the 145 who were promoted, five did not have the requisite qualification. They were promoted without following the All India Council for Technical Education norms, the affected teachers said in a letter to the higher education secretary and to the Director of DoTE.
All the promoted associate professors joined the allotted engineering colleges and assumed their duties as per a government order issued on April 18 this year. They had also submitted forms for pay option to the respective institutions in May. But on May 4, DoTE issued a circular to all colleges to collect the pay fixation forms from the promoted faculty members. However, it stopped the fixing of pay temporarily.
Information received through Right to Information Act in July revealed that the stoppage of pay fixation was done as five persons among those promoted did not have the requisite qualification. The inquiry also revealed that the department had not instituted a committee. Instead, comments were sought from the respective college principals.
Affected associate professors said since the department already knew who the five persons were, it should ensure that those who have the required qualifications should be given their pay fixation dues.
