The Tata Institute of Fundamental Research announced that it had paid the remainder of the salaries to its staff and research scholars on Thursday, a day after it said that they will only receive half their salary for February “due to insufficient funds”, PTI reported. The institute has more than 250 members of staff.
The research institute’s registrar, retired Wing Commander George Antony, had issued a notice on Wednesday saying “all staff members and students/ post-doctoral fellows of TIFR, its centres and field stations will be paid 50% of the net salary for the month of February immediately”. The remaining will be paid “when sufficient funds are available”, the notice had said.
On Thursday, Antony said: “The complete salary of all the employees of TIFR has been credited to their respective bank accounts. The issue has been solved now.” Reports claimed that the institute had paid the remaining amount to its employees after news reports about the fund shortage went viral on social media.
One of the top scientific research institutions in the country, the Tata Institute of Fundamental Research is funded almost entirely by the Department of Atomic Energy. The department, in turn, functions directly under the Prime Minister’s Office. The Bharatiya Janata Party’s Jitendra Singh is the Minister of State for the Prime Minister’s Office.
Apart from the main campus in Mumbai, the institute has branches in Pune, Hyderabad and Bengaluru.
Earlier on Thursday, Mukund Thattai, head of academic activities at the National Centre for Biological Sciences, a centre of the TIFR in Bengaluru, said there had been a delay in the disbursement of funds by the department.
“We got a notification of delay and the director of the TIFR is in touch with Department of Atomic Energy secretary and some of the funds have come already,” Thattai told Scroll.in. “The director of the National Centre for Biological Sciences has chosen a policy that once the funds come to us, people who have the lowest salary scale, Rs 50,000 or below, will get the full amount in March and proportionately whatever is left will be given to the scientific staff.”
Thattai had said that all the staff members will be reimbursed accordingly when the Bengaluru institute receives the funds.
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