Minutes of the FA Executive Committee meeting held on 06/03/00 Members present: Prof. Swami Manohar President Prof. Diptiman Sen Vice President Dr. V. Kumaran General Secretary Ms. P. G. Vathsala Joint Secretary Mr. Adinarayana Murthy Treasurer Prof. A. Surolia Mr. C. Rajanna Mr. A. Suyambu Mr. C. Shivakumara Dr. B. Ananthanarayan The meeting commenced with a discussion of the minutes of the previous meeting. Mr. Adinarayana Murthy pointed out that the following corrections should be made. 1. Only the key for the FA office in the FLS building was obtained by Mr. Shankar and Mr. Adinarayana Murthy, and no new allotment was made. 2. It was decided to nominate new representatives to institute committees by the FA. These corrections were approved by the EC. Mr. Adinarayana Murthy suggested that a letter should be sent to all sections in the administration regarding the new Executive Committee, and also alerting them to the fact that FA had an office with a mailbox. Dr. Ananthanarayan requested a discussion of the interest subsidy rule of the institute for house building, and it was decided to discuss this at the next meeting after examining the council resolution in this regard. Prof. Manohar forwarded a resolution stating that the nominations of the executive committee to the institute committees should be valid for only one year, and the fresh nominations should be made by the new executive committee after the term of the previous committee is over. This resolution was unanimously adopted by the Executive Committee. The following nominations for the executive committee for the institute committees were approved. House allotment committee Mr. Adinarayana Murthy (ISU) Dr. Ram Seshadri (SSCU) Medical Committee Prof. Ananthakrishna (MRC) In the event of Prof. Ananthakrishna declining to represent the FA on the medical committee, it was decided that Mr. Rajanna would be the representative. The issues to be discussed at the next meeting with the director were taken up. 1. The pay committee recommendations for SSOs according to the Fifth Pay commission report had not been implemented. It was decided to impress upon the director that these should be implemented speedily in the interest of fairness. 2. With regard to the Professors of Eminence post, Prof. Surolia and Dr. Abinandanan had met Prof. Sonde, who is a member of the Council subcommittee looking into this issue, on the day of the last Council meeting. While Prof. Sonde was in complete agreement with the FA about the desirability of having the post of Professor of Eminence, some quarters were concerned that similar demands would be made elsewhere. It was decided to bring to the notice of the director that the PG Institute of Medical Education and Research at Chandigarh already operates a scale of Senior Professor (Rs. 22,400 - 24,400) which is equivalent to our Professor of Eminence. Similarly, AIIMS and other institutes have introduced a similar facility. Though the Professor of Eminence post had been approved at the April 1999 council meeting, it has not yet been implemented. 3. a) The FA had requested a change in designation for Scientific Assistants at the last meeting with the director, and he had said he would look into the matter. It was decided request him that further action be taken in this regard. b) A letter had been submitted to the registrar on 2 January 1998 requesting that the pay scale of Scientific Assistants be fixed as per the Part C of the First Schedule of the V Pay commission report, but no action had been taken by the institute in this regard. It was decided to bring this to the notice of the director. c) The evaluation for Scientific Assistants had been stopped, on 24.08.98 along with the evaluation of the employees. The Scientific Assistants form Group IV of the faculty, and evaluation for the other three groups has been continuing. It was decided to request the director to restart the evaluation process as for the other faculty. 4. The director had agreed in principle that a Grievance Committee would be set up at the last meeting. It was decided to request the director to set up the committee with at least two representatives from the FA. 5. There are many institute committees which deal with issues that affect the faculty. It was decided to request the committees to forward a copy of their minutes to FA, so that these could be made known to the members. 6. There has been a long delay in the construction of new houses for the faculty. In addition, there is a waiting list of over 100 people for D and E type quarters, and it is necessary to construct housing on a continuing basis for the faculty so that this waiting list could be cleared. 7. The status of the rationalisation of SID, CSIC, Schemes and ABETS. 8. Due to the lack of computerisation in the salary section, and due to the fact that there is no employee in the salary section who can operate the computer, the issue of the Salary statement was getting delayed and in most cases it was issued only a few days before the tax returns were due. In many cases, there were tax arrears to be paid because of wrong calculations on the part of the salary section. It was decided to request the director to instruct the salary section that the salary statements should be given to all faculty before March 15, so that they could work out the arrears and pay the taxes on time. 9. The conditions of service requested by FA has still not been provided. In addition, in the list of committees, some have been left out. 10. A time frame should be set up within which administrative responses, such as paying vendors for purchase or clearing Leave Travel Allowance bills, should be completed. The following matters have to brought up with the Registrar and the Financial Controller. 1. Some government organisations get transport allowance even within the same campus, if the distance from home to place of work is more than 1 km. The same could be extended to institute faculty also. 2. The details of the arrears payable according to the V Pay Commission recommendations have still not been provided to the faculty. 3. There should be some provision for emergency response in the case of breakdown of electricity or water supply, etc. within the campus at all times. 4. Salary statements should be provided to all faculty before March 15, so that they could clear any arrears as necessary in time. The issue of telephone connections for faculty will be examined further by Prof. Manohar and Mr. Adinarayana Murthy and presented at the next EC meeting. Prof. Sen brought up the issue of secrecy of MOUs signed by SID with companies, and said that these should be made public. All members were in agreement with this, and it was decided that all suggestions in this regard would be collected in the web page set up by Prof. Manohar and Prof. Vinay and forwarded to the director. It was decided that in addition to a felicitation function for retiring members, a welcoming function for new faculty could also be held every 6 months.