State teacher associations complain about budget delays

Though less than 10% of Bihar state’s annual budgetary allocation on education is meant for the higher education sector, the budgeted grants are never released to the universities and colleges on time, causing a delayed payment of salaries and pensions to the teaching and non-teaching staff, sources said on Sunday 19 January, writes BK Mishra for The Times of India.

Sources added that the salary grants from March to June 2024 were released to the universities in July and from July to September in late October. The salaries and pensions of the university staff for October were released in November. However, no funds have been released to date for November 2024 onward. The budget review of the universities commenced in March last year and the same is yet to be completed. For the third time, the budgets of the universities were reviewed by the education department from 8-17 January this year. Meanwhile, salary and pension grants were released to the universities in instalments on an ad-hoc basis.

Expressing their grave concern at the ongoing process of budget review, the Federation of University Teachers Associations of Bihar (Futab)’s working president Kanhaiya Bahadur Sinha and general secretary Sanjay Kumar Singh, pointed out that the information sought by the department in the course of review is completely unnecessary and ridiculous.
Full report on The Times of India site