IMPHAL: Nine employees of the UGC-funded Centre for Study of Social Exclusion and Inclusive Policy (CSSEIP) set up at Manipur University , including professors, have not received their salaries for the past eight months. With little clarity on the reasons behind this, options are running out for these employees.The nine staffers are among scores of employees of 35 such CCSEIP academic centres who have not been given their salaries for months. The centre offers courses of scheduled tribes, scheduled castes, minorities and socially marginalized people.Sources in the Centre-run Manipur University said the institute is not in a position to clear the salaries as the UGC has not released the money. The process for disbursing money to some centres is on, but CCSEIP Manipur University is not one of them, sources added.E Bijoykumar Singh, the director of the CCSSIP at Manipur University said the uncertainty of the continuation of the centre has put a block on its expansion."Owing to non-release of funds from UGC even the salaries for the staff have been pending for the last eight months. Under these circumstances, the smooth functioning of the centre has become a challenging issue. The only solution to this problem is that the CSSEIPs should be made permanent and the staff working in these centres be kept on par with the university employees," the director said.The non-release of the funds to the CCSSIPs has irked faculty members across the country, with many pointing out the loopholes of the varsities and the government's policy makers. "With no salaries for eight months, we are having to borrow money to run our households. This is too much," a professor at CCSEIP said.Vivekananda, a faculty member of the CCSSIP in Baba Saheb Bhim Rao University in Lucknow lamented that the centre does not even have a full-time director. He said, "The UGC should also be flexible in this sensitive area. Because of fund blockage, we are not able to concentrate on research work."Echoing Vivekananda, the CSSEIP director of Sri Krishnadevaraya University in Andhra Pradesh, MD Bavaiah, said "Universities are not willing to pay the salaries of the staff from their general accounts as they are appointed under plan schemes and their positions are not regularised on par with the regular employees of the universities.""The universities are under the impression that if the UGC closes these CSSEIPs, nobody will bear the responsibility of reimbursement of the amount paid as salaries to the staff of CSSEIPs. It is in this situation that the Universities are not coming forward to pay the salaries for the staff of CSSEIPs from their general funds," he added.Notably, the fate of these CSSEIP centres across the country is also at stake because there is a likelihood of some underperforming ones being shut down after being reviewed by the UGC.

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