QAU faculty plans anti-VC protest at D-Chowk

Islamabad: The agitating Quaid-e-Azam University teachers on Thursday warned that they would protest at the D-Chowk and outside the chancellor’s office if the vice-chancellor didn’t step down over the administrative and academic failures.

The teachers have been staging protests on and off campus for three weeks seeking the resignation of VC Dr Javed Ashraf over incompetence and poor policies. Accusing the VC of administrative and academic mismanagement, the protesters said they would continue agitating until Dr Javed quit to save the university from further crisis.

Leading protesters, Dr Asif Ali said the teachers had stopped taking classes and hadn’t handed over the results of semester exams to the controller (examinations) as part of agitation against the VC.

He said the teachers were committed to taking the protest movement to its logical end. “If the VC doesn’t resign, we’ll go to the D-Chowk and chancellor’s (president’s) offices to press the authorities for meeting our genuine demand,” he warned.

The protesters’ leader claimed that almost all faculty members were part of the anti-VC agitation. On the other hand, the VC refused to step down. He told ‘The News’ that a number of faculty members had been forced to join the protest.

The VC also said the call to boycott classes and disrupt academic activities was an attempt by the protest leaders to have their promotion cases reviewed by a ‘possibly more pliant’ future VC. He insisted that the protesters had refused to speak to him and deans for the resolution of their grievances.