Disparity in wages of Asstt Professors and Contractual lecturers at Government Degree Colleges in Jammu & Kashmir has generated sense of discrimination among the contractual lecturers who still wait for the recruitment notifications from Jammu & Kashmir Public Service Commission to try their luck for regular appointments on vacant faculty positions. Assistant Professors appointed through General Recruitment Processes undertaken by J&K Public Service Commission (J&K PSC) get monthly salary of about Rs 1.5 lacs but unfortunately contractual lecturers of Degree Colleges get just Rs 28000/-,i.e, even less than the salary of a school teachers. While more teaching work is extracted from the contractual lecturers than the regularly appointed Assistant Professors yet they are not offered even half of the salary of Assistant Professors which would have been over and above Rs 60,000 a month. Such a huge discrimination in wages done to research scholars for the job of teaching by all standards of understandabilities pushes contractual appointees into a state of mental frustration the remedy of which lies in the doubling their present amount of monthly fixed wages and fast track recruitment processes for the vacant positions of Assistant Professors in all the subjects in Degree Colleges across Jammu & Kashmir. What matters the most is that posts are not only available in good old Degree Colleges established decades ago but also in dozens of Degree Colleges sanctioned and established during last five years both in Kashmir Valley and as well as Jammu division.
In this entire process of wages and working of the teaching staff the fresh recruitment for positions of Assistant Professors for Degree Colleges lying vacant for a very long time is issue of bigger concern as regular appointments for the vacant positions of Assistant Professors through J&K Public Service Commission would give sense of job security to the contractual lecturers most of whom may be selected for teaching jobs in Government Degree Colleges by the J&K Public Service Commission. No doubt that Lt Governor is deadly opposed to any compromise on transparency in recruitment processes for different services and posts in Jammu & Kashmir but it is also an irrefutable fact that delays in recruitment of teaching staff in education sector and discrimination in wages with one or other class of teaching staff is also not a good omen for the growth and development of the educational institutions in Jammu & Kashmir like several states and union territories of the country.
While the Lt Governor Manoj Sinha has himself during the last review meeting of several Government departments promised economic and social justice to workers of even unorganised sector, the contractual lecturers of Government Degree Colleges also deserve better treatment in scale and payment of wages in the spirit of economic and social justice promised by none else than the Lt Governor himself even to the workers of unorganised sector in Jammu & Kashmir. In this entire process of wages and working of the teaching staff the fresh recruitment for positions of Assistant Professors for Degree Colleges lying vacant for a very long time is issue of bigger concern as regular appointments for the vacant positions of Assistant Professors through J&K Public Service Commission would give sense of job security to the contractual lecturers most of whom may be selected for teaching jobs in Government Degree Colleges by the J&K Public Service Commission. No doubt that Lt Governor is deadly opposed to any compromise on transparency in recruitment processes for different services and posts in Jammu & Kashmir but it is also an irrefutable fact that delays in recruitment of teaching staff in education sector and discrimination in wages with one or other class of teaching staff is also not a good omen for the growth and development of the educational institutions in Jammu & Kashmir like several states and union territories of the country.
