Fuuast VC dishonoured varsity’s charter, claim teachers as they demand financial audit

Responding to a recent interview of the vice chancellor (VC) of the Federal Urdu University of Arts, Science and Technology (Fuuast), Prof Dr Syed Altaf Hussain, in which he criticised the teachers’ politics at Fuuast and shared his views on other matters, some teachers of the varsity have demanded a financial audit of the Fuuast, said that Urdu university has been suffering because of its senescent VC.

Elected members of the Nominating Committee of Fuuast Dr Irfan Aziz and Dr Iftikhar Ahmed Tahiri, and others issued a statement to respond to the allegations of the Fuuast VC in his interview published in The News on Monday, September 23.

Dr Aziz and Dr Tahiri said many remarks made in the interview were unbecoming of a VC who violated various provisions of the charter of Fuuast by making such statements.

Education in Urdu

As the VC had said not every subject could be taught in Urdu and a single university should not be expected to promote the national language, the teachers said such remarks were against the very motto of Fuuast, which was ‘Qaumi Tarraki ka Zarea, Qaumi Zuban Me Taleem [education in the national language leads to nation’s progress]’.

They demanded that the varsity’s senate question the VC over his such remarks. The teachers alleged that instead of making Fuuast a robust international university that was dedicated to the promotion of the national language, the VC did not address the problems of the faculty of engineering and others on the pretext that the modern subjects could not be taught in Urdu.

The Urdu university was chartered for the promotion of Urdu language in 2002 and its students could use their medium of education in English or Urdu, the teachers said. They added that a lot of faculty members at Fuuast had been carrying out research in English and a good number of students were taking their examinations in English as well, which showed that the promotion of Urdu at Fuuast was not being made at the cost of the academic standards.

Dr Aziz and Dr Tahiri said the VC’s remarks had brought the Urdu medium degree programmes of Fuuast into disrepute and they were also against the charter of the university, parliamentary directives and various observations of the Supreme Court.

Administrative chaos

Referring to the prevailing administrative chaos at Urdu university, the teachers held the VC directly responsible for the mess. They said Dr Hussain had been running the university for two years and he was still unable to appoint permanent officials against important posts, including those of the registrar, controller of examinations, finance director and planning and development director.

One should wonder how the Urdu department of Urdu university has only three permanent faculty members, the nominating committee members said. They alleged that the incumbent VC had continued to keep the players of the erstwhile plagiarism-famed VC of Fuuast at all the key administrative posts. They lamented that no action had been taken by the current VC against incompetent officials holding key posts at the varsity.

They claimed that Dr Hussain had been bestowing favours to the members of the selection committee. “How can you make one man head of more than nine very important committees?” they asked.

Despite the recommendations of the nominating committee, the VC and his handpicked people were trying to keep the senate membership incomplete on one pretext or another, the teachers said, adding that the other decision-making bodies of Fuuast such as the syndicate and the

academic council had been filled on a temporary basis and this was the root cause of the administrative chaos.

The teachers also criticised the VC for eliminating the departments of Islamic history, history, Sindhi, social work, Arabic and other disciplines. In the interview, Dr Hussain had said many departments of social sciences at Fuuast were to be merged into one single department.

Teachers’ politics

Commenting on the VC’s censure of the teachers involved in politics at the varsity who, according to the VC, had been harming Fuuast for at least a decade, the nominating committee members said the teachers were the custodians of Fuuast who had resisted many unethical and contra-educational moves of the previous VCs.

Fuuast could not form a full selection board for teachers since 2013 and there had been no convocation since the last nine years, the teachers said. They lamented that although teachers had been retiring every year, the vacant positions were not being filled and more than 80 per cent sanctioned posts were lying vacant.

The university had not paid salaries to its contractual teachers since the last two semesters and there were many departments where contracts for teachers for the current semester had not been issued so far, the nominating committee members said.

They further alleged that whereas, the grants to the faculty and students for research and publication had been stopped but the self-projecting publications of the VC were still being printed in large numbers without any interruption. If the VC can appoint people of his choice at newly created posts against better payments, what makes him unable to release the salaries of teachers who have already taught their courses, they asked.

They said when teachers demanded improvement in the education standards, they were served show-cause notices and blamed for politicising the varsity.

The nominating committee members also asked the VC to come forward with innovative ways to overcome financial crunch at Fuuast. There were many ways through which the varsity could increase its resources and the VC must come out of his comfort zone to address the financial woes of the varsity, they said.

Islamabad campus

The teachers said the Islamabad campus of Fuuast had become a never-ending project of the varsity. They added that members of the senate were raising serious questions on dubious financial matters related to the Islamabad campus. The VC was answerable to the senate and attempts to avoid questions and trying to malign the senate members was not a positive thing to do, they said.