Bankrupt VTU hires retired employees for hefty salaries

Belagavi: Although  in deep financial crisis with all its major back accounts seized by the Income Tax Department,  the Visveswaraya Technological University (VTU) reportedly spends a whopping Rs 22.36 lakh every month on salaries of 31 re-employed and special officers, whose  posts are neither sanctioned nor approved by the government.

While the retired employees, who are over 60 years old, are appointed on fixed salaries, the “special officers” in non-teaching jobs,  draw hefty salaries running into lakhs.

Only recently, the VTU employed 15 retired employees to various key posts without allegedly giving an opportunity to any of the over 400 employees  working with it to opt for them. 

And as many as 16 special officers, who were drawing huge salaries as professors in various colleges affiliated to it , are now paid by the university directly, although they are merely  non-teaching officials. “When the university is in a financial mess with over Rs 400 crore in its bank accounts seized by the I-T department, it is unfortunate that it continues to spend huge sums on retired employees and special officers,'' says a noted academician, suggesting that it could appoint fresh candidates or get officers from  government departments on deputation for these posts instead.

Registrar Jagannath Reddy, however, defends the university's decision, contending that it could not regularise many top posts as the government allowed only regularisation of posts of  assistants and junior assistants. “As we need  experienced staff to work in departments of accounts and DPAR, we had to reemploy retired officers, who are experts in the field,” he maintained.

The university has been in the news for all the wrong reasons for many years, and investigating agencies are still struggling to probe the various allegations levelled against its  top officer. 

Several committees were formed by the sucessive government to look into its affairs.