The state government has decided that the salaries of vice-chancellors, teachers and other employees in state-aided universities will be transferred to their accounts from the government’s treasury, an education department official said on Wednesday.
The changes that are going to be introduced have been communicated to the universities, the official said.
The new system will mark a departure from the practice of paying salaries from the accounts of the respective universities, said an official of the education department.
In the existing system, a university’s finance officer posts salary bills on a portal, against which the treasury transfers the money to the university’s account. The university then disburses the salaries to its employees.
This mechanism was started in 2016.
An education department official said: “Now the government is saying salaries will be directly transferred to each employee. The employee database is to be inserted into a designated system using a menu designed by the department. The human resource management system (HRMS) is well integrated, so the salary will be directly credited to the bank account of an employee.”
A Presidency University official said the system will make an employee of the university a direct employee of the government. A section of professors was also worried that the “government could stop the salary of an employee as a punitive measure”.
Calls and text messages to education minister Bratya Basu went unanswered.