HYDERABAD

The teaching and non-teaching staff in private degree and post-graduate colleges in the State are finding it difficult to take care of their families as the managements have not been paying salaries for months due to non-release of fee reimbursement funds pending for the last two-and-a-half years, said Bharat Rashtra Samithi (BRS) leader T. Harish Rao.

“Chief Minister A. Revanth Reddy who often makes tall claims about creating a world-class education system in the State with Young India Schools is unable to clear the fee reimbursement dues, pushing the private degree and post-graduate colleges into a crisis,” the BRS leader said in a statement on Tuesday.

He stated that unable to pay building rents, power bills, university fee and other management expenses, several colleges have already shut down. Out of 960 colleges functioning in the past, 310 were already closed and more colleges were facing closure as the government was not releasing fee reimbursement funds, he said.

The impact would be mostly on rural areas where the presence of degree and post-graduate colleges is very less. Closure of one college in a rural area would distance higher education to hundreds of students, mostly those from the SC, ST and BC communities. He explained that fee reimbursement dues were at ₹2,500 crore when the State was formed (BRS came to power in 2014) and they were all cleared and the scheme was continued.

In nine-and-a-half years, the BRS government had paid ₹19,500 as fee reimbursement. In nearly three year after Congress took over, the dues were standing at ₹10,000 crore, Mr. Harish Rao stated and demanded that the government implement a system of timely release of funds for the scheme.