Shortage of administrative staff affecting functioning of colleges across the state

Updated on: Wednesday, December 12, 2012

A committee constituted by the Kerala State Higher Education Council to study the issues of administrative staff in colleges has said that acute shortage of administrative staff has affected the functioning of colleges across the state.

According to the committee chaired by pro-vice-chancellor of Calicut University K Ravindranath, the colleges and universities in the state require at least 1,600 more employees.

said Lopez Mathew, convenor of the committee, said, "These include clerical staff, and other posts including watchers, sweepers and menial staff." "We will recommend to the government to take necessary steps to create 600 clerical posts immediately."

The committee, after holding discussions with more than 100 staff members and representatives of staff organizations of various colleges across the state, submitted its findings to the KSHEC on Tuesday.

In the report, the committee has suggested to rephrase 'non-teaching staff' as "administrative staff", as the former term evokes a feeling that they are not part of the organizational structure.

The report also said the pattern of the administrative staff is totally unscientific and has to be reworked and fixed by the government.

K Ravindranath, committee chairman, said, "After the pre-degree course was removed from colleges, new courses were allotted. But the administrative staff pattern has not been fixed on the basis of the student-course ratio. We have asked the government to undertake this task at the earliest."

The report also recommends that for the appointment of clerical staff, the basic criteria should be bachelor's degree and sound knowledge in computers with equivalent pay and service conditions of an assistant in government service.

The report recommends that the appointment of the administrative staff in universities should be left to the Public Service Commission.

"As the appointments in the government colleges are being done by the public service commission, the appointments of the administrative staff in universities should also be left to the PSC. Necessary amendment in the laws have to be made for this," he said.

The committee has also recommended grading the colleges as special grade colleges (those with more than 1250 students, 15 courses and 5 PhD programmes), A Grade (1, 000 students, 12 courses), B Grade (600-999 students, 10 courses), C Grade (below 600 students, 5 courses) and D Grade (all other colleges including oriental colleges and training) and listed out staff requirement for each category.

Shortage of administrative staff affecting functioning of colleges across the state

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