Srinagar: Shortage of faculty members at Old City’s prominent and oldest educational institute, Gandhi College has come under severe criticism.
The students while talking to Precious Kashmir informed that there are inadequate faculty members in core subjects like Political Science, Economics, Sociology, Environmental Science and other subjects from the past nearly two months.
They said that lack of faculty is only adding to the miseries of the students enrolled there, who are being forced to attend merely two-three classes in a day.
Students said that it seems that we are being deliberately pushed to the wall and kept away from education. “We have already suffered huge academic losses during the past two years and there is a need to ensure every possible support to students at this juncture so that the losses can be compensated,” a student said.
He added that such a “chaotic situation” was not even witnessed during the times of online classes. “We have been approaching the college administration since long, but nothing has been done in this regard,” he said.
The staff members of the College also admitted the lack of faculty members, saying that the less number of faculty members are being forced to give extra classes, but the new faculty members are not being appointed to fill the vacancies.
It is worth to mention here that the College was established in 1942 and is located in Shamaswari area of Fateh Kadal in Srinagar district.
Principal Gandhi College, Assmat Abbas when contacted admitted shortage of faculty members and said that they are following the directions from the higher ups about filling the vacancies.
She said that they have been told to take the guest faculty, but soon when they contacted the persons for guest faculty, they refused the offer as their issue is already pending in the court.
“ We can only follow the directives from the higher authorities,” she said, adding that the Director Colleges and other higher ups are already aware about the issue.
Director Colleges, Prof. Muhammad Yousuf, said that they are not aware about the issue in the College, saying that until and unless the concerned Principal will not inform them about it; it is not possible to get the ground reports.
“Still, I am coming on Monday and will fix a meeting to see what issues the college has been facing,” he said.
