FAPUASA seeks PM intervention as govt condemns HEC to default

Islamabad:Despite repeated appeals and a rapidly changing educational landscape, the government once again allocated only Rs65 billion as the recurring grant for higher education, the same amount that remained unchanged since 2018 despite increases in salaries and pension covered by recurring grant.

Federation of All Pakistan Universities Academic Staff Associations (FAPUASA) has strongly condemned the government’s continued neglect of the higher education sector as evident in the proposed Federal Budget for the upcoming fiscal year.

If this crisis continues, it will inevitably lead to the financial collapse of Pakistan’s public university system, said a FAPUASA statement. It called upon Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif to intervene urgently to rescue the higher education sector, just as he acted to steer the country away from sovereign default. A similar commitment is now needed to avert the collapse of our academic institutions, it said.

“This stagnant allocation is wholly inadequate given the substantial expansion of the public higher education sector.”