ICAI president appeal members to Ensure effective practical training

As you may be aware, in its endeavour to streamline and sustain the efforts of the Institute in providing effective training to articled assistants, the Council of the Institute has been taking different initiatives from time to time. One such recent initiative was to effectively curb the menace of dummy articles, so as to ensure that the articled assistants take the required training from their principal during the prescribed working hours of the firms/proprietor concerned. During the course of implementing the decision of the Council on the aforesaid issue, the Institute has come across situations where articled assistants are alleging about taking training beyond the normal working hours specified by the Council without any compensatory holiday or otherwise.

While taking stock of the initiatives taken by the Council in the matter of providing effective training to articled students by members and students also taking the training in the required manner, it has been felt that the members of the Institute training articled assistants be specifically requested to comply with the following decisions taken by the Council, in letter and spirit:-

• The minimum working hours for the articled assistants shall be 35 hours in a week excluding the lunch break.
• The office hours of the principal for the articled assistants shall not be generally before 9.00 a.m. or after 7.00 p.m.
• The normal working hours for the articled assistants shall not start after 11.00 a.m. or end before 5.00 p.m.
• If the exigencies or nature of training so warrants, the articled assistant shall work beyond the normal office hours. However, the maximum working hours for the articled assistant should not exceed normally 35 hours in a week excluding the lunch break and in any case or circumstances should not exceed 45 hours per week. In case the articled assistant is required to work beyond 35 hours per week, he is entitled to compensatory leave calculated with reference to the number of completed hours worked over and above 35 hours per week. The principal shall ensure that long working hours are not imposed on the articled assistants on a regular basis and only in case of exceptional circumstances where time bound work is to be delivered the articled assistants may be required to work longer hours which will still be subject to a maximum of 45 hours per week. The principal shall be free to allow compensatory leave or off hours in lieu of extra working beyond 35 hours.

I am confident that as a valued member of the noble profession, you would be complying with the requirements of the Council. It may, however, be noted that non-compliance with the above would be viewed very seriously.

CA. Uttam Prakash Agarwal
President8th June, 2009