Amid the struggle against the prevailing COVID-19 scare, final semester students of Manipur Technical University (MTU) are faced with another concern whether they will be able to complete their course in time for their career to take off.
Final semester students in four departments, namely Mechanical Engineering, Civil Engineering, Electrical Engineering and Computer Science are unable to start their projects in absence of regular teachers in the said departments
As per information received by the Imphal Free Press, only the Electronics and Communication department has regular faculties out of the five departments opened in the University.
“Completing the project with approval by the supervisor, who should be a regular teacher as per guidelines, is compulsory for the students to pass their exams,” as told to IFP by the aggrieved students.
Interacting with the Imphal Free Press, one BTech final semester student, who chose to be anonymous, lamented, “Even if we commenced our project, we are worried whether our project paper will be approved as our teachers are yet to be regularised.”
“We are the first batch to complete the four-year course and we are afraid whether we will lose out one year if our projects are detained,” she said.
Already troubled by the problems of the pandemic in the state, most of the students are extremely worried.
“We are remaining silent because of the COVID-19 pandemic. But we are extremely worried about our future,” another student confided said.
According to the guidelines of All India Council For Technical Education (AICTE), the teacher-student ratio for engineering and technology courses in the technical universities should be 1:20.
However, there are around 500 students and only 25 teachers in MTU. Out of the 25 teachers, only nine are regular, five are hired on contract basis and 11 are guest lecturers.
Even though the University was established four years ago in 2016, there is inadequacy in the strength of teachers as pointed out by the students.
Following the cabinet decision taken on February 11 this year, the department of higher and technical education had sent conveyance letter to the university registrar for regularisation of services of 11 assistant professors on a guest basis earlier this month.
However, the same has not been reportedly materialised till date and fingers are pointed at the university authority for allegedly not regularising the teachers.
Meanwhile, vice chancellor, MTU, professor L Tombi clarified that the university authority is helpless as there is no post creation by the government for regularising the teachers.
“Absorbing the guest teachers in the already advertised vacant posts would only invite controversy as many others have also applied for the posts. We have written to the department of Higher and Technical education for posts creation but there has been no response so far,” he said.
The MTU professor also informed that he would introduce the matter for discussion in the Board of Management meeting on June 29, if there still is no response from the government.
Meanwhile, one guardian of a student also urged the government to look into the matter and bring out a solution at the earliest to ensure that the lives of students are not jeopardised.
