‘UoP facing financial crunch’

PESHAWAR: Peshawar University Teachers Association (PUTA) President Arif Khan has said the government's failure to own higher education was creating severe problems in the society and hampering development activities.

Talking to The News, PUTA President Arif Khan said the university was a mini Khyber Pakhtunkhwa where students from every district and tribal agency were enrolled and they took back the newly acquired knowledge and culture to their native areas.

Arif Khan, who is a lecturer at the Department of English and Applied Linguistics, University of Peshawar (UoP), said PUTA as one of the oldest associations in Pakistan has been working for 62 years to safeguard the rights of the faculty at UoP besides creating research-friendly environment at the university. He said PUTA was responsible for input from one of the three stakeholders - students, faculty and administration-in policy-making.

He added the association was collaborating with the administration to find solution to the university's financial crisis. The PUTA president claimed that UoP was facing severe financial crisis, adding that a rough estimate suggested the university spent Rs110,000 annually on a single student.

He disclosed that funds to the universities had decreased after the 18th Amendment to the Constitution. "The financial burden on university that included burgeoning pensions is rising every year," Arif Khan pointed out. He feared closure of the university if the financial issue was not addressed.

"The government must take education seriously or else every field of life in the country would decline," the PUTA president warned. He appreciated the government for taking steps for primary and secondary education, but added that higher education could not be ignored.

He disclosed that PUTA had suggested establishment of an endowment fund to streamline the financial issues of the university. Arif Khan claimed the quality of research at UoP had suffered due to the financial problems of the institution, adding that at some departments quality research was being produced but UoP cannot market it as it lacked resources.

"The university has some quality laboratories that could be utilised for producing international standard research," he said. He disclosed that PUTA was working for the establishment of a Research Facilitation Cell at UoP.

Responding to a question about PUTA's role for addressing problems being faced by the students, he said students' reservations on fee-hike were genuine but the university had no other option but to raise fees.

He pointed out that the fee issue could be resolved if the government took interest. "The university is not a money-making machine. We are providing services to the community and the government has to take the required steps to resolve the issues," he maintained.

He said the higher education sector had suffered after the 18the Amendment as the provincial government had not taken complete responsibility while the federal government claimed that the sector had been devolved.

"The students and faculty are suffering in this transition phase," he said. He opined that nobody in the corridors of power owned higher education. Regarding a question about the establishment of BS system at the universities, he said it should have been managed at the college level.

"We are working on a plan to suggest to the Higher Education Commission (HEC) that first four semesters of the BS system should be administered by colleges while the students should enroll at the university for the last four semesters,"he added. He said UoP was among the few universities in the world that have botanical garden and a Plant Biodiversity Department.

"Societies breed in universities. Development, industrial revolution and agriculture revolution cannot be brought about without universities. In order to develop the country, the government has to facilitate education," he remarked. He asked the government to return the Botanical Garden to UoP, saying that it was not the issue of land but quality research and credibility.