A number of public universities around the country have been recruiting teachers without letting the University Grants Commission (UGC) know, making it hard for the regulator to arrange their salaries.
UGC officials said, with allocation generally amounting to less than one percent of the total budget every year, the regulator of the country’s universities would struggle to pay the salaries of these additional teachers.
A bulk of these unapproved teachers have not been getting their salaries as the regulator had already decided to not pay their salaries.
A section of teachers, recruited by former vice-chancellor (VC) Abdul Jalil Miah, of the Begum Rokeya University in Rangpur has already launched a movement demanding immediate payment of salaries.
UGC officials feared that the abundance of underqualified teachers and the latest unrest in the public universities might give rise to serious complications in the academic process in future.
According to UGC, Abdul Jalil Miah made a total of 367 unapproved recruitments during his tenure at the Begum Rokeya University.
There are allegations that most of them were his close relatives and friends and many others had been recruited for the payment of handsome bribes.
University sources said the teachers whose recruitments had been approved by the UGC also got their salaries late in April due to the unapproved recruits.
Abdul Jalil was terminated in early May after a UGC probe committee found him guilty of widespread irregularity. UGC officials also informed that a total of 170 recruitments were made at the Patuakhali Science and Technology University (PSTU) which did not have the necessary approval. The regulator said it would not be able to pay their salaries.
PSTU VC Professor Shams-ud-Din declined to comment on this saying: “You [this reporter] got the information from UGC and asked them about this. I do not want to comment on this.”
Assuming that the 537 unapproved recruits at the two universities were supposed to be paid an average monthly salary of Tk17,000 each, the UGC would have to pay an additional total of more than Tk9.12m per month. This would amount to around Tk109.54m per year.
UGC officials said due to the approved recruitments, they had already been running a deficit of Tk15m in the last five months which would stand at around Tk30m by the end of the year.
In the outgoing 2012-13 fiscal year, the budgetary allocation for UGC was Tk12.3bn – roughly 0.8% of the total non-development budget.
The UGC pays the salaries of all the teachers and employees of the 34 public universities in the country.
During the recent movement of teachers at the Jahangirnagar University (JU), a section of teachers alleged that the then VC Shariff Enamul Kabir had recruited as many as 200 teachers and employees during his 3-year tenure, most of which, they claimed, were unnecessary.
JU, according to the Jahangirnagar University Act 1973, does not need to get recruitments approved by the UGC. Only three other universities – Dhaka, Rajshahi and Chittagong – also enjoy the same facility.
UGC officials said even if these universities were immune to the recruitment approval stipulation, the regulator still had to pay the salaries of any recruitment they made.
The ex-JU VC, however, denied all allegations against him but stepped down in the face of teachers’ movement.
UGC Chairman AK Azad Chowdhury told the Dhaka Tribune that the regulator normally got very small budgetary allocation every year.
When universities recruit teachers without taking UGC’s permission, it became really hard for the regulator to manage everything within the meagre allocation, he said.
