Hyderabad, February 17: Talks on fee reimbursement between a cabinet sub-committee and private colleges failed today and the latter vowed to close their gates to students from Feb. 24.
The college managements spurned an offer by the state government to release for now Rs 1,000 crore of the arrears towards fee reimbursement, scholarships and mess charges, demanding payment in full.
Of the total amount due of about Rs 2,600 crore towards fee reimbursement, the sub-committee offered to immediately clear 25 percent of it and to pay the remaining in a phased manner by October.
The colleges, represented by the Consortium of Engineering and Professional Colleges Managements Association, would have none of it.
In all, there are 2200 college managements offering engineering, pharmacy, MBA and MCA courses with a total strength of about 25 lakh students in the state.
After one and a half hours of talks with the college representatives at Secretariat this evening, cabinet sub-committee members — Botsa Satyanarayana, Pitani Satyanarayana, B Saraiah, K Parthasarathy, P Balraju and Mohd Syed Ahmadullah — said they were ready to release Rs 1,000 crore — inclusive of Rs 650 crore towards fee reimbursement and Rs 350 crore for scholarships and mess charges — for the academic year 2010-11, keeping the interests of students in view.
Botsa Satyanarayana said: ‘’We hoped that the managements would respond positively. In spite of financial difficulties, the government came forward to clear 25 percent of the dues immediately, and to clear the remaining in the next few months. But they did not listen.”
On the other hand, consortium representatives — who included the chairman of the Engineering and Professional Colleges of AP N Ramesh, general secretary of the Rural Engineering Colleges Management A Srinivas and others — warned that they would close their colleges indefinitely from Feb. 24 if the government failed to clear the arrears in full.
It has become inevitable for the colleges to close since they were not in a position to pay salaries to the faculty and other staff.
The government has failed to provide a permanent solution to the problem and went back on its statement made in the affidavit to the Supreme Court, they remarked.
They asserted that they were ready to hold further discussions on the issue with chief minister Kiran Kumar Reddy. In fact, 75 percent of the colleges were in debt, and banks have issued notices to those which have failed to clear their loans, they added.
Some arguments took place among the representatives of managements before the talks. Differences arose among them in respect of fixing a deadline to the government.
–IANS