300 college staffers in Gurdaspur without salary for two months

Staffers claim this is a recurring issue as their engineering college is not covered under planned budget of the government due to a technicality

Gurdaspur: Over 300 employees of Beant College of Engineering and Technology (BCET), Gurdaspur, have not been paid salary for the past two months. BCET Staff Welfare Association president Gurmukh Singh said this was a recurring issue with the staff as the college, set up to promote technical education in the border area of the state, had not been covered under the planned budget for technical education in the state since 2004. He claimed that polytechnics and ITIs were being covered under this head, even as two other government colleges in the state face the same fate as their institution.

HT Image

He added they had even met state technical education minister Charanjit Singh Channi in this regard, but the situation had not been remedied.

Punjab technical education director Vimal Setia said, “The file of salaries of the staff of BCET, Gurdaspur, is with the principal secretary of the department, Anurag Verma. The BCET staff get salaries from tuition fee fund, which is not sufficient to pay salaries right now, thus the delay in payment.”

Gurmukh said the delay in salaries was a huge mental stress for the staff, especially in times of the covid-19 pandemic. “The college has a lot of other heads with sufficient funds to pay our salaries,” he claimed.