Out of 9,000 teachers, only 1,000 assessing papers

Mumbai: It’s been around three-and-a half months since Mumbai University’s (MU) final year examinees’ wait for their results. While students are anxious, several teachers, who are part of the 9,000-strong assessment team, are no less exasperated with the way the varsity is allegedly trying to tackle the delay. These teachers have complained that out of the total strength of 9,000 assessors, on a daily basis, only around 1,000 actually assess the answer sheets on the online On-Screen Marking (OSM) system.

An irked assessor said, “Is it not compulsory for all the assessors to assess daily on OSM? It should not be that only a few should be working daily while others stay absent for various reasons.” The assessor said, “The total strength of teachers is more than 9,000 but only 1,500 are present on a daily basis. Why is the rule of being present everyday without a weekly off only for us and not them?” asked a teacher.

During the non-instructional days, for the teachers in order to complete the assessment process, only 5,000-6,000 were present and not everyone.

The teachers, because of lack of strength, assessed around 1,000 answer scripts on Sunday.  “It is stressful for us as well like everybody else but in order to complete the task, we are managing it anyway. That is not the case with every other teacher at other centres,” said another assessor who worked through the weekend too.

Meanwhile, MU vice-chancellor Sanjay Deshmukh has missed another deadline of August 5 to declare the results that was promised on August 2 to the Yuva Sena delegation. July 31 was the original deadline, however, that was missed as only 158 results out of 477 examinations were delcared.

Furthermore, till Sunday, only 274 were declared out of which 119 were for department of arts, 10 for commerce, 22 for science, 21 for management and 93 in technology.

VC Deshmukh, who bought in the idea of making the assessment process ‘digital’, is now in a spot for the decision.