New Delhi: Government engineering colleges in the state which are facing an acute shortage of qualified teachers are set to get a boost in their workforce as the HRD Ministry has now selected highly qualified professionals to fill the void.
As per the ministry’s plan, 65 new faculty members who are mostly fresh graduates from premier institutes like the Indian Institute of Technology (IIT), National Institute of Technology (NIT) and PhD holders are now set to join four selected government engineering colleges in Orissa, including the one in Kalahandi.
Union HRD Minister Prakash Javadekar Wednesday announced the selection of 65 new faculty members for Orissa engineering colleges out of 5,000 applicants from the premier institutes who opted for going to the remote areas in the country and teaching students in government engineering colleges.
Javadekar said, “65 faculty members in Orissa formally joined the four engineering colleges at the level of Assistant Professors to fill the void. They will be on a three-year contract period and will be paid `70,000 per month. The scheme covers selected backward states like Orissa, Chattisgarh, North East and others.”
The candidates have been selected and posted to different engineering colleges under a scheme called Technical Education Quality Improvement Project (TEQUIP-III). The government has earmarked `375 crores for the three-year scheme. The total number of faculty members who joined 53 colleges as Assistant Professors in 11 states is 1225.
The ministry said that often it used to get complaints about lack of teachers in engineering colleges in backward areas and the states had been demanding some measures to tackle the issue. Accordingly, a public appeal was made to M Tech and PhD students asking them to express their interest in joining the backward areas and serve the students there.
The ministry claimed that 115 of the best faculty are going to seven backward districts of the country including Kalahandi in Orissa.
Manish Kumar,OP
