Teachers’ appointment on administrative posts in ICU continues

PESHAWAR: The appointment of teachers on administrative positions in violation of the Khyber Pakhtunkhwa Universities (Amended) Act 2016 continued in the historic Islamia College University as another teacher was posted Tuesday as the deputy registrar.

According to sources, Mohammad Haroon, a lecturer in Law Department of the university, was appointed as its deputy registrar. The newly appointed vice-chancellor of the university Dr Habib Ahmad has recently filled a number of other administrative positions with teachers.

The recently promulgated Universities Act bars the teaching faculty from appointment against administrative position. However, the vice-chancellor is of the opinion that he was authorised to make the appointments. A number of universities in the province are facing shortage of administrative officers. In such a situation, they assign the administrative duties to members of the teaching faculty.

At the University of Peshawar too, a number of teachers have been working on key administrative positions for years.  According to President of Federation of All Public Sector Universities Administrative Staff Association, Mohammad Ilyas, the Khyber Pakhtunkhwa Agriculture University was the only exception where all the administrative positions were filled with administrative staff soon after the promulgation of the act and the teachers were removed from there. In the rest of the universities, he said, teachers were still serving against the administrative positions. He opined that certain vested interest elements were trying to impede the implementation of the Universities Act.

He said that the aim of removing teachers from administrative position was to enable them to focus attention on their basic duty, which is academic and research, and improve the ranking of the universities. He said it was unfortunate that none of the universities in KP could get a position in the top 10 universities of the country.