KU to take up regularisation of casual employees with govt

Bismah Malik

Tribune News Service

Srinagar, May 3

Grappling with payment of salaries to around 1,000 casual labourers, who have been hired in various departments as well as the administration section of Kashmir University, the university has finally decided to take up the issue with the state government.

Official sources revealed that a meeting would be held on May 7 on the KU campus during which the KU management would meet the officials of the Finance and General Administration Department and discuss the process of regularisation of its casual employees who have served in the university for nearly seven years.

Sources revealed that the Kashmir University Ministerial Staff Association (KUMSA) had put pressure on the management to immediately seek regularisation of these casual employees.

The move comes at a time when the state government has put a blanket ban on the regularisation of contractual employees serving anywhere in the government institutions.

The university had started hiring contractual employees during former Vice Chancellor Riyaz Punjabi’s tenure for the construction purposes of the main Hazratbal, north campus and south campus of the university.

The university shells out over Rs 5 crore from its annual budget for paying salaries to these employees.

However, the recruitment of these employees as well as their engagement has always been under scanner especially when a casual labourer was found doing domestic chores of former registrar S Fayaz.

Students and scholars at the university have alleged that the casual labourers are recruited by the heads of departments and are not specifically engaged for university projects.

“It has become a norm here that these casual labourers are employed in the residential quarters of the professors. Many of them have even become full-time drivers. The number of these employees is even more than the permanent faculty and non-faculty staff,” a resident scholar said.