GUWAGATI, Feb 7 � The employees� union federation of the seven IITs of the country has warned of a five-day strike unless the IITs� authorities addressed their pay and promotion-related grievances in a month�s time.
The 81st meeting of the Co-ordination Committee of All IIT Employees� Unions and Associations at IIT-Guwahati held the directors of the IITs responsible for not taking up their demands properly at the right forum. It also blamed a discriminating attitude on the part of the authorities against the non-teaching staff of the country�s premier technical institution.
The employees demanding the implementation of 10-year span for their promotion and implementation of upgraded pay scale for the B, C, and D grade employees, among others, expressed their dissatisfaction over their meeting with the IITG director, Gautam Baruah on Saturday.
According to the committee, all B, C and D grade employees of the IITs had been enjoying an eight year spanned promotion policy till April 1998. But after the withdrawal of the Recruitment and Career Development Scheme (R & CDS) in the Central Pay Commission, the Government declared a Modified Assured Career Progression (MACP) Scheme, for the non-teaching staff of all the IITs, with a 10-year spanned promotion policy.
�But to the utter surprise of all the IIT employees, it had been witnessed that a totally new concept of promotion policy, called Recruitment and Career Development Scheme (RCDS) of 12 years span, had been introduced by the Ministry of HRD, withdrawing the IIT Council approved MACP during the beginning of 2006,� said Rabisankar Sukul, convener of IIT Co-ordination Committee and general secretary of the employees� union of IIT-Kharagpur.
�The IIT employees were totally confused when they learnt that the MHRD�s order had superseded the council�s order, which was regarded as the highest body of the IIT family,� he added.
The committee further alleged that the newly introduced RCPS was not at all beneficial to the employees of the IITs unless some of the anomalies in the scheme were removed.
�In the joint meeting of all IIT directors and all IIT Co-ordination Committee held on July 11, 2006 at IIT-Bombay, all these anomalies were pointed out, but it did not yield any positive response, neither did the subsequent correspondences made on the issue,� he added.
The other two demands which the all IIT directors had agreed earlier were implementation of modified RCPS with effect from January 1, 2006 and implementation of the pay scales for Group D.
Earlier, the IIT-Guwahati director, while interacting with the employees, asked them to make practical demands, which had stronger justifications as those could be achieved sooner. �The IIT directors are not to be blamed for the unfulfilled demands as they have little to do in this regard except for putting up the matter in the IIT Council,� he mentioned.
�Since the IIT management is not trying to resolve the problems, there will be no other alternative for the Co-ordination Committee but to resort to a major movement in near future which may result in total collapse of the IIT system,� the committee members mentioned.
