The University of Mumbai has now been stuck in the new controversy as the PF (Provident Fund) office has issued a legal notice to the University for not paying the PF amount of its contract workers. Since the University has not paid the PF amount of 6.5 crores, it has now increased to more than 10 crore rupees. The PF office had earlier also issued a notice to the University, since it was ignored by the administration, they are now warned with a new notice.
The University is already in controversies over academic result confusion, NAC valuation and the unstable financial conditions. As the PF office has initiated strict action against the University the University administration is under big pressure.
There are permanent and contractual workers in the Mumbai University. There are 987 permanent employees and 1194 contract workers. All of these employees are from grades. There are 166 permanent teachers and 110 teachers are contract basis. Contract employees have approached court for ‘Equal Work Equal Pay.’
While this matter of equal wages is pending in court, the University has also made a mess in in paying the provident fund payable to these employees. It has been found that PF deposit of these employees of more than 60 months from April 2009 to December 2016 have not been deposited by the University.
Throughout this period of 60 months, the university was expected to pay around Rs. 6.50 crore rupees. However, the University has not paid this amount as the share contributed for the employees. have not even contributed their share. These employees are expected to get 12 percent of PF of which 3.67 percent to be deposited by the university and the 8.32 percent under Prime Minister’s Employment Promotion Scheme. However, it is revealed that the university administration has not paid this PF amount.
Although the PF was getting deducted, the employees had no information of it and so they never had the PF number too, the employees have also confirmed this news. When asked to the Senate member of the University of Mumbai, Supriya Karande, she said, “This matter is in court, it has been found time to time that the University is not serious about the contract workers. We have raised many questions regarding this in the senate meeting, except the so called assurances; the University had never done anything in the favor of contract workers. If still the University doesn’t do anything, we will do the strong agitation.”
The PF office has taken strict action against the University. Earlier, on July 20, 2018, the PF office had issued show cause notice to the University, but the university did not respond to this notice. Therefore, the second notice to take a serious action against University has been sent on August 20. The University is now under pressure as this notice stated that the strict action will be taken against the concerned people by Police as per the rules.
Dr. Dinesh Kamble, In-charge Registrar, Mumbai University
Mumbai University has paid the pending amount of PF during April 2009 to December 2016. However, information of some of the employees is not available with the university, so only that amount is not paid in the PF account. But we are collecting this information and will soon pay the remaining PF amount; we have informed the same to the PF office.
