As of now, about 2,200 professors and employees have retired from the country´s oldest university. To make matters worse, more than 200 staffers, mostly professors, are set to retire this year. [break]
According to TU Registrar Bhim Raj Adhikari, more than 500 employees will retire in the next two years. “The number of retired staffers will go on increasing,” Adhikari said.
Currently, TU requires Rs 2.25 million every month to provide pensions to its retired staffers. TU has been providing monthly pensions even to the widows of its retired staffers. This has added more burden to TU´s pension fund. But, TU has no reliable fund for providing monthly pensions.
“We have no permanent fund,” Adhikari told myrepublica.com. “We have managed to provide monthly pensions out of the annual grant that the government allocates us.” Last year, TU had sought four billion rupees. However, the University Grant Commission (UGC) allocated only Rs 3.2 billion. “We have been relying on this annual grant for almost everything,” he said.
In the past, TU has often complained of fund crunch. Also recently, TU had failed to distribute monthly pensions for over two months, worsening the plight of those surviving on it. “If we fail to manage sustainable fund, we will soon have no money for pensions,” Adhikari told myrepublica.com.
Keeping in view the pension fund crunch, TU has sought two billion rupees from the government to utilize it as the seed fund.
On Tuesday, TU´s Vice Chancellor Prof Dr Madhav Sharma, accompanied by UGC chairman Dr Kamal Krishna Joshi, met Prime Minister Madhav Nepal to ask for financial assistance. “The prime minister was very positive,” Joshi told myrepublica.com. “He said he would forward our demand to Finance Minster.”
Once the seed fund is set up, TU will distribute monthly pensions out of the interest the fund would generate. “In case, the seed fund falls short of our monthly requirements, we will manage it from other resources,” Adhikari said.
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