Cash-strapped Telangana Congress govt forms committee to mobilise funds for fee reimbursement scheme

Facing protests from private colleges over unpaid fee reimbursement dues, the Telangana government has formed a 15-member panel to explore sustainable funding options, including a proposed ‘Trust Bank’ model to stabilise higher education finances.

Hyderabad: The cash-strapped Telangana Congress government is looking for ways to mobilise finances for clearing fee reimbursement dues to private colleges, which have already closed their institutions over pending dues.

The government has constituted a 15-member committee, with Special Chief Secretary to Government (Welfare) as its chairman, to mobilise finances to fund its fee reimbursement scheme. Three representatives of the Federation of Associations of Telangana Higher Education Institutions (FATHI) that represents private professional colleges have also been included in the committee.

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The committee has been tasked to study the self-sustainable fee reimbursement scheme through the ‘Trust Bank’, which was recently proposed by the FATHI. It has also been asked to come up with constructive and robust inputs, transparent and sustainable framework for rationalisation of fee reimbursement policy.

The colleges have already called for a protest with around 30,000 staff members on November 8. In addition, they announced Chalo Secretariat programme, with 10 lakh students, on November 11 over the fee reimbursement dues.

It may be mentioned here that as the State government had failed to clear the tuition fee dues to private colleges on time, the FATHI proposed the ‘Trust Bank System’, a revised and self-sustainable fee-funding scheme, for generating funds.

To be established as per the RBI guidelines, the Trust Bank as per colleges can run with components including seed fund to the tune of Rs 1,500 crore from the State government, interest waiver from Central government schemes (Rs 300 crore), cess on various business sectors (Rs 375 crore), and corpus fund from educational institutions (Rs 389 crore).

Further, the government has asked the committee to examine and give suggestions for improving the higher education system in the State. After holding detailed deliberations, examining suggestions and proposals, the committee has been instructed to submit a report to the government within a period of three months.