SHILLONG, Sep 19: NEHU Non-teaching Staff Association (NEHUNSA) will go on an indefinite strike from Tuesday to protest against the contract extension of the Officer on Special Duty (OSD), Examination Department of the North-Eastern Hill University (NEHU).
The current OSD reportedly retired as Controller of Examination on December 31, 2020. But the services as OSD were extended since then till date.
The protest will likely be held in the vicinity of the Examination department premises.
However, the All NEHU Workers Union (ANWU) will not participate in the indefinite strike of NEHUNSA as they were not consulted, president of the union Napoleon S Mawphniang said.
“The indefinite strike is of the regular staff but not from the union,” he said.
The NEHUNSA alleged that the OSD had failed to act despite being told that marksheets could not be printed due to the unavailability of consumables such as UG marksheet papers, stickers/mark list. “Most of the printers in postgraduate section and certificate cell are outdated and most are out of order. The concerned officer, Purchase and Store (P&S) Section, has inquired whether there is a need to replace the heavy duty printer, but no comment was given by the OSD on the concerned file,” the association said in a statement.
It has also been alleged that despite the students making the required payments for postage charges involving their transcripts, M.Phil/PhD thesis, important letters, etc., “the department was not in a position to post the mentioned documents due to non-availability of funds as the OSD never initiated the process of getting the funds allocated to the department”.
Reportedly, maintenance fees to software vendor for UG Computer Software, and upgrade of the server were also not taken up for the last three years. “This is a very critical issue since all the Examination Department’s Data is stored in this database,” the statement said.
“It may be noted that for the interest of the students confidential section of Examination Department is exempted,” it added.
