‘Universities going on hunger strike while HEC building new secretariat’

Islamabad:University of Balochistan faculty members have set up a hunger strike camp at the Campus for non-payment of their salaries and demanded the government of Pakistan to resolve the issues facing higher education on a priority.

Dr Amjad Magsi, Central President, Federation of All Pakistan Universities Academic Staff Associations (FAPUASA), in a statement issued here expressing serious concerns over the start the hunger strike said that today all public-sector universities across the country are going through a severe crisis period and the Higher Education Commission is completely unable to solve the problems of these universities.

The FAPUASA President added that HEC’s budget is frozen at Rs65 billion since 2018 and Dr Mukhtar Shah, chairperson, HEC, has started the construction of a new HEC Secretariat with a huge budget of billions of rupees. He said that the main function of HEC is to address the problems facing higher education in the country and solve the problems of the universities, but today BPS teachers are protesting for their basic right of service structure while the salaries of TTS teachers are not being increased since few years and the entire responsibility of these chronic issues rests on the authority of the HEC and its head.

Dr Uzair Ahmad, General Secretary, FAPUASA, said that the universities of Khyber-Pakhtunkhwa are also suffering from severe economic and administrative problems like Balochistan University and the time is not far when the teachers of KPK will also be forced to set up hunger strike camps outside their respective campuses. He further said that the HEC officials including their boss, instead of fulfilling the promises made to the FAPUASA office-bearers and solving the problems of the teachers, are spending the development budget of higher education for the construction of the new secretariat.

FAPUASA believes, the statement said, that when the responsibility of higher education is gradually being transferred to the provincial governments instead of the Federal Government, it is incomprehensible for Dr Mukhtar to dedicate a large part of the construction budget to his Central Secretariat.

The Central President of teachers’ nationwide union demanded the provincial governments to establish provincial Higher Education Commissions and give them administrative and financial autonomy to solve the problems of universities in their provinces on a priority basis. He especially demanded that the Government of Balochistan should resolve the issue of salaries to finish the hunger strike of university teachers immediately otherwise, the teachers sitting outside the gates of the Balochistan University will become a question mark for the education system of the entire country.