NEHUTA asks VC to deposit teachers’ fund to CMRF if not PM CARES

Syllad | The Rising MeghalayaMay 25, 2020

The North Eastern Hill University Teachers’ Association (NEHUTA) has asked the vice chancellor Prof SK Srivastava to deposit earmarked funds of the association to the Meghalaya Chief Minister’s Relief Fund (CMRF) for tackling the COVID-19 pandemic.

The demand came after the vice chancellor failed to heed the humanitarian appeal of the teachers to desposit two-year earmarked funds of NEHUTA to PM CARES.

“Given this saga of failure and willful subversion of the University by the incumbent VC, the NEHUTA would once again, albeit without expecting any positive response from such an incumbent would implore that if the VC has any problem with PM CARES, he can kindly deposit NEHUTA’s earmarked funds to CMRF,” president of the association Prof XP Mao said in a statement issued on Monday.

“If he has any problem with Prime Minister Modi or the central government, as his second term is under wraps, it would no less be a service to humanitarian cause, if NEHUTA’s earmarked funds are deposited to Meghalaya Chief Minister. The NEHUTA believes that it would be an expression of solidarity with the Government of Meghalaya in this hour of grave crisis,” he said.

He informed joining the call for supporting national relief work under COVID and other humanitarian disasters, one day salary of the members of NEHU fraternity have already been deposited to PM CARES.

Further slamming the VC for turning deaf to humanitarian cause, Prof Mao said, “The VC has forgotten that before becoming VC, he was a teacher and as a teacher it is his duty to support fight against COVID by depositing Teachers’ Association’s earmarked funds to the cause of the nation.”

He said the decision of the NEHUTA, being a statutory body of teachers of NEHU, cannot be legitimately ignored like this.

“This is an act of willful, malafide and deliberate denial in line with VC’s disrespect for Act, statute, ordinances of the premier university. He has proven in his last four and half years, which now reached a fag end of his tenure, as a time for total reversal of established norms and procedures of the University, which has destroyed the premier institution brick by brick,” he said.

Further, the NEHUTA president said not depositing earmarked funds of the assocation to PM CARES is an example of the VC undermining the university and its objective for socio economic and cultural upliftment of the people of the North-Eastern region.