Jadavpur University is paying teachers Rs 50,000 as advance for “procuring hardware/peripherals as teaching aid in this pandemic era”.
A notice issued on July 30 says the university has considered the proposal to provide support towards teaching aid, “especially in the pandemic area where online teaching is compulsory”.
The advance will be recovered in 20 installments (Rs 2,500) from the salary from October 2021 to May 2023.
An official of JU said it had become clear following chief minister Mamata Banerjee’s announcement that the campuses could be reopened only in November, subject to improvement in the Covid situation.
Mamata had said on Thursday that the government would try to reopen schools and colleges “on alternate days” after the Puja vacation, following a meeting with the state’s global advisory board on Covid-1“Since online classes are here to stay, we have decided to provide assistance to the teachers so that classes are held without any disruption,” said a JU official.
The notice says: “The finance committee has considered the proposal…. where online teaching is compulsory. The teachers are required to apply.... within 27th August”.
Vice-chancellor Suranjan Das told Metro: “Conducting classes over digital platforms has become an unfortunate reality until the pandemic ends. We have provided students encountering digital divide with smartphones and bearing the cost of datapacks. Now we are extending assistance to the teachers so that classes can be held seamlessly.”
A corpus of Rs 23 lakh was raised over the past one-and-a-half years, which was spent on buying students smartphones and data packs.
Partha Pratim Roy, the general secretary of the Jadavpur University Teachers’ Association (Juta), said the need to procure hardware like desktops, laptops and peripherals such as routers and scanners was on the rise as online classes and examinations would continue for quite some time.
“Teachers have to conduct classes, attend departmental meetings, download answer scripts and upload those, post-scanning, through a device. A teacher might want to buy an additional laptop or desktop so that the task can be split between two devices,” he added.
“Sometimes, while attending a faculty council meeting that goes on for hours, no other activities can be carried out as the device remains occupied.... If we have an additional device, downloading and uploading scripts can be done separately,” said a teacher.
An official said the teachers wanted the university to buy the devices, which would be returned once the need for conducting online classes and exams was over.
The notice, signed by finance officer Gourkrishna Pattanayak, says: “Considering present financial position the university is not in a position for providing such support, where the requirement of funds will be more than three crores and where such support will not be covered by government funds.”
An official said the earnings of the university had taken a hit, as students could not be charged any application fee following a government order.
