New Delhi:
The Delhi University Teachers’ Association (DUTA) on Saturday observed ‘Black Teachers’ Day’ to protest the alleged delay in grants to 12 DU colleges fully funded by the city government. Teachers’ Day is celebrated on September 5 on the birth anniversary of former president S Radhakrishnan.
The police detained over 30 teachers even before the protest could start at around 2 pm at Arts Faculty and took them to Maurice Nagar Police Station, the DUTA alleged. Many other teachers also courted arrest in solidarity, with the numbers increasing to over a hundred, they said.
Police said they did not have permission to protest. “There were around 100 DUTA members protesting. They did not have permission for it. They have been detained and taken to Maurice Nagar Police Station,” a senior police officer said.
DUTA called it a Black Teachers’ Day as for “no fault of theirs, employees of the 12 Delhi University (DU) colleges which are 100 per cent funded by the Delhi government are going without salaries for five months now.” “Over 2,000 teaching and non-teaching staff and their families are under tremendous stress and do not know how to cope with such a situation. Inordinate and unexplained delays in release of the grant have had a crippling effect on institutions. This is totally unacceptable, more so in the current context, when employees are battling health and livelihood issues,” the teacher’s body said. Accusing the AAP government of resorting to “anti-employee tactics in order to resolve its differences with the university”, the DUTA said the dispensation is “forcing teachers and non-teaching staff to resort to extreme steps”.
“The DUTA urges the Chief Minister to end this stand-off and not penalize employees. The employees of these colleges and their families are citizens of Delhi and their mental and physical well-being is the responsibility of the Delhi government,” it said. The AAP dispensation and the university have been locked in a tussle over the formation of governing bodies in 28 colleges, 12 of which are fully funded by the Delhi government.
The DUTA claimed that the government has released inadequate grants to colleges, which has led to delay in salaries of employees at a time when people are in the middle of a pandemic.
