Orissa medical colleges face staff shortage -- OMTA

Sambalpur, Feb 11 (UNI) Expressing grave concern over the acute shortage of teachers in three medical colleges in the state, the Orissa Medical Teachers' Association (OMTA) has urged Chief Minister Naveen Patnaik to enhance the retirement age of teachers.

In a letter to Mr Patnaik, the OMTA had appealed to enhance the retirement age of teaching staff to 62 years.

'' There will be acute shortage of staff in all the three medical colleges at Burla, Cuttack and Berhampur since several vacancies are yet to be filled up, '' OMTA president Dr I R Agrawal said.

At the same time, a good number of teachers had preferred to join private institutions leaving government jobs, he added.

The shortage of staff in the medical colleges would also pose problem for increasing the seat strength by Medical Council of India (MCI).

Dr Agarwal said 17 and 22 senior faculty members would retire in 2008 and 2009 respectively from the three medial colleges which would further complicate the crisis.

Citing the case of VSS Medical college at Burla, the OMTA president said 97 posts out of the total 255 sanctioned strength in different posts right from lecturer to professor were presently lying vacant.

Retirement and voluntary retirement by the teaching staff in these three medical colleges would aggravate the situation in near future, he said and suggested to the government to follow the steps taken by Jharkhand, Chattisgarh, Madhya Pradesh and Karnataka to mitigate the problem.

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