Teachers at IIEST, Shibpur, marched through the campus on Thursday evening to protest the administration’s “blatant disinterest”, resulting in fundamental service-related issues such as retirement benefits allegedly remaining unresolved.
Over 100 teachers joined the march, which started from the new building on the campus and went past the director’s bungalow before ending in front of the main building.
Some of the teachers held posters. “Pension is our constitutional right,” read one of the posters. “Let’s walk for pension,” read another.
A teacher said the post-retirement benefits of 160-odd teaching and non-teaching employees who joined service between 2004 and 2014 were mired in uncertainty because of “lack of intent from the administration”.
Till 2014, IIEST was known as the Bengal Science and Engineering University (Besu), a state-aided university. In 2014, it became a central government-run institute and was renamed the Indian Institute of Engineering Science and Technology (IIEST).
“The administration should have by now asked these employees whether they want to be under the state government’s pension scheme or the one applicable to central government employees. The administration has not taken any step because of their blatant disinterest,” said Tapendu Mandal, secretary of the IIEST teachers’ association.
Another teacher said they were forced to organise the march because pension-related issues had not been resolved despite repeated representations by the teachers’ association to the director and the board of governors.
Calls and text messages to the IIEST director, Parthasarathi Chakrabarti, went unanswered.