BDU staff want teachers’ hiring put off

Trichy: Bharathidasan University Staff Welfare Association has urged the university administration to regulate expenses and focus on generating funds as its available funds may last only till the year end which may even affect disbursal of salary to staff. It said the university must postpone the direct recruitment of 54 regular faculty members as it would invite further expenses.

“There isn’t any revenue coming to the university, but spending is continuing,” said associations ecretary S Muruganandam. “The university has exhausted its general fund and now the corpus fund is used to disburse salary to staff. The corpus fund has come down to less than Rs 100 crore from over Rs 200 crore two years ago. It may last only till end of the year,” he added.

There was huge spending towards NAAC preparation in 2018 though the university secured A+ grade in April last year, said a finance department source. A purchase committee needs to be constituted to purchase material at competitive cost for developmental works. Instead, the university has been doing direct procurement without following procedures. “We have now sought constitution of a committee to inspect the spending for developmental work,” said the association. “The block of grant of Rs 5 crore from the state government in March has returned. Given the financial burden to the state government because of Covid-19, the funds are unlikely to come any time soon,” said Muruganandam.

However, BDU registrar G Gopinath told TOI that the university is in comfortable zone in terms of its finances though it is not as good as it was a few years ago. The university runs 10 constituent colleges and there is huge spending towards their 700-odd staff. However, the state government will reimburse the money spent on four colleges that it took over last year. “We get periodic block grants from the state government and Rashtriya Uchchatar Shiksha Abhiyan (RUSA). We are also looking for other avenues. Presently, there are no classes and we have no idea as to how long it will go on,” he added.