PESHAWAR: The tenure track faculty of the public sector universities has rejected the Higher Education Commission (HEC)’s new funding policy and termed it exploitation of the university faculty (Tenure Track System)
Through an open letter, the association said that after taking stock of the HEC’s notifications regarding funding policy for TTS faculty and release of funds to universities, the All Pakistan Tenure Track Faculty
Association (APTTA) vehemently rejected this unjust, unilateral and abrupt policy.
The association asked the HEC to immediately roll back this policy and continue the old one where the universities were receiving a separate fund under the head of the TTS.
It said that numerous universities conducting the selection boards against TTS positions had converted these into Basic Pay Scale (BPS) or contract positions.
“It is not difficult to figure out why this is happening. The existing TTS faculty across the country are feeling insecure about their annual increments and promotions because the administration of the universities is already deviating from the TTS statutes of the HEC,” the letter said.
It said the HEC had not paid
heed to the demand to ensure a hundred percent compliance with university TTS statutes. “After the announcement of the new funding policy, we have fears that the universities will throw the HEC’s TTS Model Statutes out of the window and will design their own rules on the whims of their internal establishments,”
it added.
The TTS system was launched by the HEC to boost the research culture and productivity in the universities. The initiative indeed met its
goals, rather it exceeded the expectations, as per HEC’s own reports, the letter added.
The reports had shown that the TTS faculty was far ahead in terms of all metrics of academic excellence than the BPS system, despite facing terminations, lack of social security, absence of any cover in case of in-service death, and many other precarious measures.
Moreover, at times they were receiving similar salaries as the BPS faculty despite that they were promised 400 percent higher salaries in the beginning. Recently, they are not even getting 35 percent higher salary than BPS despite the prime minister’s approval.
The association said that if the HEC did not withdraw the said notifications and restore the previous TTS funding regime, the TTS faculty would stage protests and sit-in outside the HEC offices in Islamabad.