Sindh decides to increase higher education budget from Rs22bn to Rs30bn

The Sindh government has decided to increase the budget of higher education from Rs22 billion to Ras30 billion for the fiscal year 2024-25. In this regard, the Sindh Higher Education Commission has sent its proposal in the form of a summary to Chief Minister Murad Ali Shah.

In this way, the budget of the Sindh Higher Education Commission will be more than that of the Federal Higher Education Commission, while the budget of the Federal Higher Education Commission is being reduced from Rs65 billion to Rs25 billion.

A vice-chancellor who made budget proposals told Daily Jang that the chief minister is well aware of the financial situation of the province’s universities, and that is why the budget in Sindh is being increased from Rs22 billion to Rs30 billion.

But now, the situation has changed because the Federal Higher Education Commission will not give the entire budget to the provinces this year. Last year, it gave 13 billion rupees to the universities of Sindh, which will not be received now, so the provincial government will have to increase the budget further, because the budget of University of Karachi and University of Sindh alone is four billion rupees, while the budget of the NED University and Mehran University is more than two billion rupees.

Dr Fateh Marri, vice chancellor of the Tando Jam Agricultural University, has called a meeting of government universities across Sindh at 4pm on Wednesday against the Federal Higher Education Commission for not giving the budget to provincial universities, in which the future line of action will be decided.

Dr Fateh Marri said that there are 27 public universities in Sindh, and despite the increase in the budget by the provincial government, the problem will not be solved until the federal grant is received.