Centre urged to release pending Rs1,700 cr of PMS

Our Correspondent

Khanna, December 2

The Punjab Unaided Colleges’ Association (PUCA) urged the Centre to release pending Rs1,700 crore of the Post-Matric Scholarship (PMS) for the SC/ST students of Punjab at the earliest.

Anshu Kataria, president PUCA, said the Punjab Government had already released a major part of Rs323 crore, which was further disbursed by the Centre to Punjab and some part of the pending payment was also being released in this month to the colleges. But still, an amount of Rs1,700 crore is pending for the SC/ST students of Punjab for the year 2016-17, 2017-18, 2018-19 towards the Centre Government.

Finance secretary, PUCA, CA Manmohan Garg said the unaided colleges of Punjab were under heavy financial crunch due to the non-payment of funds from the government. He said due to non-payment, salaries of last 4-5 months of teaching and non-teaching staff members have not been paid in some unaided colleges.

Kataria urged the state government to immediately notify the revised fee structure to self-financed colleges for courses including B.Ed, ETT, LLB, ITI, BA, B.Com etc. He said the colleges should get the scholarship amount of the duration for which student have studied in any college.