Vacancies take toll on Utkal varsity

BHUBANESWAR: Vacancies in almost every department have hit education in Utkal University. As per official records, there are 89 teaching posts vacant in the State’s premiere varsity. Two more professors will retire this month.Official sources said of the sanctioned strength of 46 professor posts, there are 17 vacancies. In the readers’ category, there are over 25 vacancies out of the sanctioned strength of 77. Forty-one posts are vacant in the lecturer category.The last time appointments were made was in 2010 when around 76 teaching posts were filled up.Worse is the situation in departments like bio-technology which has just one lecturer. “Except commerce and public administration departments, every  department has six or seven vacant posts. This disrupts the regular classes which are sometimes cancelled due to absence of lecturers. The officials should at least fill up some posts before beginning of the new academic session,” said Chinmay Rath, a student. Students have time and again resorted to agitation demanding filling up of the vacant posts.The situation is equally bad in non-teaching departments with 277 posts under various categories lying vacant. These are establishment section, examination, registration and migration, engineering section, certificate, audit, billing section and private PG sections.Registrar of Utkal University Debendra Nath Jena said the vacancies are a result of transfers and retirements. “Every month staff are retiring or getting transferred but there is no new appointment. Again this month, two more are retiring,” he said.The registrar said the Government was taking up the issue on priority. “The vacancies, we are told, will be filled up very soon,” he said. Jena was non-committal on the time frame for new appointments. Sources said the varsity officials are awaiting return of Higher Education Secretary Aparajita Sarangi, who is on leave, for a final decision on the vacancies.The varsity offers PG courses in around 50 disciplines, including 19 self-financed courses and three innovative courses.