Terminated employees of SZABUL threaten to move courts

Karachi
The stand-off between the administration of the recently established Shaheed Zulfiqar Ali Bhutto University of Law (SZABUL) and seven terminated faculty members worsened on Wednesday after the latter, terming the decision unfair, threatened to pursue a legal course over the matter.
SZABUL Vice Chancellor Justice (retd) Qazi Khalid Ali had handed out the termination letters, a day earlier, to seven faculty members belonging to the departments of Business Administration, Criminology and Economics following a meeting of the varsity’s Syndicate, after the institute failed to acquire admissions for the respective departments for the ongoing academic year.
However, the affected staff claimed that the decision was a clear violation of the rules and regulations formulated by the Higher Education Commission (HEC), and challenged its legal basis.
Narrating the series of events which took place before the termination, the teachers said that the VC had informed them of closing down three out of the four departments as they did not get the expected number of admissions; they were later called in at around 2pm and handed over their termination letters.
One of the employees to have lost his service, Zeeshan Mangi, - appointed as a lecturer at the Department of Criminology - said, “This university is not a private property. It is owned by the provincial government and all appointments were made in accordance with the legal procedure and cannot be terminated in this manner.”
He added that all those who were affected by the decision were consulting their lawyers and would challenge the decision in the court of law.
He informed that around 15 to 20 students had opted for the LLB programme while a total of 12 candidates took admissions in the LLM programme; around eight enrolments were finalised in the criminology department whereas four students each had gotten admission at the departments of Business Administration and Economics for the Masters programme.
“Considering that it was the university’s first batch, it was not a bad start as every institute faces such problems initially.”
The sacked lecturer also claimed that the decision was strongly condemned by a representative of the HEC during the Syndicate’s meeting held recently.
He alleged that majority of the Syndicate members were outsiders and less than half of them used to attend the meetings.
Appointed as assistant professor in the Economics department, Dr Ahmar Qasim Qazi also endorsed Mangi’s stance claiming that appointments were not contractual or conditional but were done on a regular basis.
He said low admissions did not have anything to do with the teachers’ as they are not a part of the process.
“It is the responsibility of the Sindh government to pay for our salaries and if the VC was facing difficulties in this regard he should have consulted with the provincial government.”
However, Justice Ali, while speaking to The News said, “We only got admissions for the law programme but there were absolutely no admissions for the Bachelors programme for the three departments.”
He said the university had for the past three months been paying Rs0.5 million to the sacked employees and had spent over Rs5 million on advertising admissions besides also spending money over establishing stalls at educational exhibitions and opting for other means of publicity but it did not get the desired results.
Justice Ali claimed the decision to close down the departments was taken at the Syndicate with the consensus of representatives of the Sindh Assembly, HEC and HEC Sindh and additional secretaries of law and education among others to avoid financial crisis in future.
“The sacked employees were paid a month’s salary with the notice but the University cannot afford to keep spending Rs6 million annually over their salaries without getting anything in return.”
Justifying the university’s decision under the light of the problems faced by the Pakistan Steel Mills and Pakistan International Airlines because he claimed they had failed to realise the impact of overstaffing, the VC said that SZABUL could not have sustained if it continued on the same trajectory.
There were universities who were trying to manage their affairs through bank loans but we do not wish to become in to one of those institutes, he said.
All appointments were made on merit and decision to terminate the employees was also taken as per merit, the VC further added.
“We do not want to waste the government’s money.”
The university’s registrar, Sharf Ali Shah, further added that all sacked employees were on a probation period and the decision was taken after taking the Syndicate into confidence whereas all formalities were complied with.
SZABUL was inaugurated on April 8, 2015 and was offering courses in Law, Business Administration, Criminology and Economics; the classes were scheduled to start from July 22.