Patna: More than 50,000 working and retired teaching as well as non-teaching staff of 13 conventional universities in Bihar has been enduring severe financial distress due to blocked salaries and pension disbursements. Delays stemming from administrative standoffs and missing documentation have left many elderly retirees struggling to afford essential daily needs and critical medical treatments.The state higher education department has not released salary grants to the state universities since March this year, resulting in non-payment of salaries and pension to the university employees. The finance department has reportedly frozen the payments pending clarification on the utilisation of previously released funds, leaving the university staff without their primary source of income.Expressing his anguish over the delay in payment of wages to the staff of universities and colleges, Bihar State University and College Employees Federation’s general secretary Rohit Kumar pointed out that most class three and four staff of different institutions are facing a tough situation due to non-payment of their salaries for months together. Banks are refusing to arrange for overdrafts against their salaries and even shopkeepers are not supplying commodities of daily use to them on credit. Moreover, many staff are facing great hardships in making regular payments of fees and mess charges of their wards studying in institutions outside the state, Kumar said.Kumar further pointed out that the worst is the condition of retired staff who are facing great difficulties in continuing with their medical treatment in absence of any money. A number of such staff are admitted in hospitals for being treated for serious ailments of heart, kidney or lungs and they have to be administered costly medicines, he added.The general secretary of Federation of University Teachers’ Associations of Bihar, Sanjay Kumar Singh, MLC, also criticised the delay in the release of grants to the universities due to the objection of the finance department.The finance department has stopped the release of the grants to the universities on the grounds of non-submission of their utilisation certificates of previous grants. He said the federation has met all the officials concerned of the higher education and finance departments and requested them to release the grants to the universities.Singh pointed out that nearly 75,000 contractual teachers, appointed through panchayats, and about 15,000 teachers of Sanskrit schools and madrassas have also not been paid their salaries since March this year.State higher education director N K Agrawal said the department has already instructed the universities to submit their utilisation certificates at the earliest. It has also requested the finance department to release at least three months’ salary grants to the universities pending receipt of utilisation certificates, he said.
