Staff crunch: (From top) The textile technology college in Serampore; College of Ceramic Technology in Calcutta and Kalyani Government Engineering College. (File pictures)

Calcutta, Aug. 27: Engineering and technical colleges run by the Bengal government can’t find full-time teachers.

Six such colleges under the higher education department are making do with teachers appointed on an ad hoc basis.

The institutions in question are the Government College of Leather Technology in Calcutta, the textile technology colleges in Serampore and Behrampore, Jalpaiguri Government Engineering College, College of Ceramic Technology in Calcutta and the Kalyani Government Engineering College.

The leather technology college, located in Salt Lake, stopped admitting students into the information technology and computer science and engineering courses this year because there are not enough teachers. There were 80 seats in the two courses. The shutdown followed a directive of the All India Council for Technical Education, which cited an abnormally low number of full-time faculty as reason for discontinuing the course.

“It is becoming extremely difficult for us as we have very few full-time teachers in our college. The teachers recruited on contract often leave when they get better offers,” a student said.

Officials, however, said the government had increased the numbers of seats in IT and computer science and engineering in the Kalyani college to make up for the closure of the courses in the Salt Lake institution.

The West Bengal Public Service Commission, which recruits lecturers for these institutions, had sought applications last year to fill up nearly 95 vacant posts. So far, it has not been able to appoint more than 10 teachers. “The poor response to the advertisement is a clear indication that engineers with high qualifications are reluctant to join government colleges,” a senior official of one such college said.

Engineers prefer to work in multinational or other big companies where the pay is better and the career prospects brighter, the official said.

Chief minister Buddhadeb Bhattacharjee had recently expressed concern over the acute scarcity of good teachers, particularly in IT courses.

“It is not just the government-run colleges where the teachers are reluctant to join. The private colleges are also facing the same problem,” said M. Biswas, a senior official of the higher education department.

But teachers said they prefer private engineering colleges where the managements offer higher pay in exceptional cases to stop teachers from leaving for better prospects. This option is not available in the government colleges.