Coimbatore: Of the 270 sanctioned entry level non-teaching staff posts at the Bharathiar University, only 65 are being held by permanent staff members, the university has replied to a query raised in the senate meeting that was held recently. The university has shown a vacancy of 205 entry-level non-teaching staff posts, which account for almost 76% of the sanctioned strength. In its response, the university said procedures have been initiated to fill the posts.However, non-teaching staff members said in the past 10 years no recruitment has been made to fill the posts that fell vacant following the retirement of existing permanent staff members. "Instead, the university has made use of temporary staff members who work for daily wage or consolidated pay. Because of this, several administrative functions are affected and files are not moving smoothly. As there are no permanent staff members in assistant posts, the files are not cleared. Also, as the posts are filled with temporary staff members, there is no accountability for their work,” said a member of the Bharathiar University Staff Association.Of the 77 sanctioned entry level assistant posts in the university, 68 are vacant. The 18 categories of non-teaching posts include that of technical officer, assistant technical officer, office assistant, driver plumber, electrician and data entry operator. Some of the categories don’t even have a single permanent staff.Officials, however, said they have been communicating the vacancy status to higher education department officials and steps to fill the posts were likely be initiated.University sources said there were more than 400 non-teaching staff members at the university working for daily wages and consolidated pay. While there have been calls for making the experienced among them permanent, sources said the same wasn’t done as there was an SC ruling that temporary non-teaching staff cannot be absorbed into the university’s workforce and recruitments had to be made by calling for fresh applications.However, there was precedence for temporary non-teaching staff members being made permanent in state universities, said N Pasupathy, vice-president of Association of University Teachers. “A labour court recently ordered that temporary non-teaching staff members of Thiruvalluvar University be reinstated as permanent staff. The university refused and moved the high court, which upheld the labour court’s verdict.” Most of these workers have put in more than 10 years of service, but they do not get any terminal benefits when they reach retirement age, as they are not permanent, he said.

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