BAHAWALPUR City News

The first 100 days of new VC bring no change
Islamia University Bahawalpur still without permanent registrar, treasurer, controller examination; a person with no teaching experience at post-graduate level appointed as associate professor
From Ameen Abbasi
BAHAWALPUR: Although the new vice-chancellor of Islamia University Bahawalpur (IUB) Prof Dr Mushtaq Qaisar has spent 100 days in his office, he seems to be in the dark concerning the smooth functioning of the institution according to the varsity statute.
The ground realities show his incompetence in administrative affairs during the first 100 days - a paradigm to judge the performance of any executive or administrator. It is learnt that the incumbent vice-chancellor was actually recommended for any other university, like the one in Faisalabad, and not for the IUB by the Punjab government’s search committee.
The university has suffered a lot due to the poor administration during the tenures of pervious vice-chancellors as it does not even have permanent registrar, treasurer and controller examinations for last many years.
The citizens as well as faculty members and students were expecting that the new vice-chancellor would fill these important slots on permanent basis to improve working, produce better results and boost the image of the varsity which is famous for ad-hocism and nepotism-oriented policies, especially in recruitment of faculty and administrative staff, by abusing the powers under Section 15 (3) of the university statute.
However, the things are not going to change as Dr Mushtaq too is following the footprints of his predecessors. A glaring example is the contractual recruitment of Associate Prof Dr Jawad Iqbal in the Department of Management Sciences against in BPS-20 on a three-year contract.
The eligibility criterion laid down in the Islamia University Bahawalpur Act, 1975, says for the post of associate professor, the applicant will have PhD degree with 15 publications of research articles in international journals on his credit and at least ten years of teaching experience at post-graduate classes. But the standard is not followed in this case with a sheer breach of the university statute and Higher Education Commission’s selection policy for the said post.
Interestingly, the appointment letter of Dr Jawad Iqbal does not mention the notification about constitution of the selection committee and the date of its session to ascertain whether it was held or not. Evidently, Dr Jawad does not possess any teaching experience at post graduate level as he has been working as assistant director / incharge at the HEC sub-office in Bahawalpur. He resigned from that post in October last year, which was accepted by the HEC conditionally with an advice to deposit Rs 280,671 for the remaining period of the two-year bond.
It does not stop there, as the new vice-chancellor has started to reassign the posts to those who were transferred to other departments on complaints against them. One example is of Farkhanda Yasmin who has again been appointed as deputy registrar (space management) - a post that does not exist in the university statute.
One deputy registrar female Farkhanda Yasmin has been again appointed Deputy Registrar Space Management which is non existence post in university statute.
When The News contacted Deputy Registrar (Public Relations) Khalid Shahzad to get the official version, he said the vice-chancellor version was of the view that he was doing his business according to the rules and regulations.