PU approves Rs9b budget, adopts HEC Tenure Track Statutes

LAHORE: After a lapse of 11 years, Punjab University (PU) Senate met here on Thursday and approved the university’s budget for fiscal year 2018-19 besides adopting Tenure Track Statutes of the Higher Education Commission (HEC) without any amendment.

PU Vice Chancellor Prof Niaz Ahmad Akhtar presided over the meeting after permission by the Chancellor/Punjab Governor while around 100 senators participated in the meeting. The Senate approved university’s Rs9 billion budget for the year 2018-2019 and also gave ex-post facto approval to the budgets for the previous fiscal years from 2007.

The PU Senate also gave approval to adoption of Tenure Track Statues version 2.0, revision in criteria and honorarium for Professor Emeritus, adjustment of sabbatical leaves of the faculty members working on TTS and raising minimum qualification for appointment of lecturer and assistant professors as per HEC notification.

Vice Chancellor Prof Niaz Ahmad urged the PU faculty members to apply for HEC’s funding for research and also travel grants as the Commission had huge funding for this purpose. He said there was a need to empower the university’s departments, institutes and constituent colleges to utilise the funds they generate through their own resources for their capacity building particularly in research since primary job of a university was to create new knowledge.

Briefing the media after Senate’s meeting, Prof Niaz Ahmad said the incumbent administration believed in merit, good governance, transparency and accountability which would be reflected in every operation and function of the university. Therefore, he said, the administration would make all statutory bodies functional and within two months meetings of all statutory bodies had been held. Dr Niaz said it would be helpful to streamline university affairs and ensure transparency. He said PU would take part in the race of international ranking of the universities and documents had been submitted for QS Asia ranking. He said the administration would promote socio-economic impact research so that our country and society could develop. He also said the administration would encourage foreign students and foreign faculty members for internationalizing of the university. He said the administration would restore past glory and academic excellence of the country’s oldest seat of learning. He said the administration would launch a compressed semester program in summer in collaboration with the universities of all provinces to promote provincial harmony. He said that the university had planned to launch fund raising campaign from alumni of the university.

To a question, he said that the administration would implement Punjab government and Balochistan government’s policies regarding quota for students from Balochistan and the administration would extend full support to the students from Balochistan. He thanked the senators for their contribution in the meeting for the betterment of the university.

Earlier, the members of the PU Senate shared their suggestions in the meeting while financial problems being faced by Punjab University particularly remained under discussion with many senators expressing concerns in this regard.

Dr Kamran Abid highlighted the possible implications of adopting TTS statutes without any amendment or modification and ‘abnormal’ sanctioned strength of teachers at the PU’s College of Information Technology (PUCIT).

Dr Shahid Munir expressed concerns over what he termed ‘meager’ allocation for research and gave example of different universities including those of India which were allocating huge amounts for research and development (R&D).

Dr Ahmad Bilal from College of Arts and Design (PUCAD) also shared suggestions to improve the working of the college. A number of faculty members suggested measures through which the university could generate more and more financial resources which could be utilised for R&D.  

PU VC listened to the suggestions with patience and informed the house that the university would soon submit a PC-1 to the federal HEC for the establishment of a Convention Center at the Punjab University.