Coal town colleges of Binod Bihari Mahto Koyalachal University have launched faculty exchange programme in the face of acute shortage of teachers obstructing the timely completion of courses.

Three prominent colleges of Dhanbad, including SSLNT Women’s College, Dhanbad; PK Roy Memorial College of Dhanbad and RS More College, Govindpur have already launched the exchange programme, while talks are on with two other colleges including BSK College Maithon and KB women’s College Bokaro, which are also facing the same problem.

Talking to The Telegraph Online on Sunday, Praveen Singh, Principal of RS More College, Govindpur said, “As per laid UGC norms, the teacher student ratio should be 1:25 while in coal town colleges the ratio is more than 1:300 in many of the subjects.”

“We have none of faculty in any of science subjects, including Physics, Chemistry and Zoology and somehow managing classes with contractual teachers who can’t relied as keep on leaving service as and when they get regular jobs,” said Singh.

“As classes are being held through online mode so there is no issue with the TA DA payment with regard the teachers taking classes in other colleges under faculty exchange programme as only per class payment is being made,” said Singh and added that though classes are presently being held under the faculty exchange programme with SSLNT Women’s College and PK Roy Memorial College, Dhanbad.

Elaborating over the teacher’s crisis Singh said, “We have only four regular teachers for a student strength over 7000 and we are facing great issue with the managing the administrative work like as these teachers are also overburdened with a number of responsibilities like one regular teacher who has retired yesterday was holding the charge of several posts like burser, accounts in-charge etc.”

“We even can’t entrust the contractual teachers with such key responsibilities as they due to non permanent nature of their job can’t be given task involving financial issues as they are unaccountable,” said Singh and added that due to teacher’s exchange progamme the academic can be carried out smoothly and regular teacher can have some space for discharging administrative work other than taking classes.

Principal of PK Roy Memorial College, Dhanbad BK Sinha said, “We are facing scarcity in faculty in various subjects as we have only two teachers in Commerce and one each in Political Science and Zoology.”

“Though many of teachers are not agreeing to teachers in other colleges but we are somehow motivating them to cooperate in the interest of students to ensure timely completion of courses,” said Sinha.