FUTA demands are unjust; university academics take-home pay highest: President

President Mahinda Rajapaksa yesterday said that university academics’ take-home pay was higher than that of a Supreme Court Judge and given the successive increases, the demands of the Federation of University Teachers Association (FUTA) were unjust.

Responding to questions during the breakfast meeting with Editors, the President said that to improve the quality of university education, emoluments for the academia were increased via successive Budgets with some in the process earning more than Supreme Court Judges.

“In that context, the demand of FUTA to increase basic pay is unfair. Such an upward revision will have a major impact as other sectors would also claim for same,” the President added.

Minister of Higher Education S.B. Dissanayake said that the emoluments for university academia including senior professors and senior lecturers had been increased between 83% and 39% via 2010 and 2011 Budgets. Among increases made were a 300% rise in fees for visiting lecturers to Rs. 1,500 and 500% increase in fee for compiling and marking examination papers.

“If one takes a closer scrutiny of the various demands of FUTA, their unreasonable nature is very evident,” Minister Dissanayake said.

With regard to the Z-score controversy, both the President and the Minister said a proper analysis of the grievances of students would be done to ascertain the best solution.

Minister Dissanayake said that during the past few years, university admissions had been increased from 7,000 to 22,000 per year in tandem with demand though facilities and capacity at universities hadn’t seen a corresponding improvement.