Ban on recruitment in universities: KP varsities union warns of protest if decision not withdrawn

PESHAWAR: Federation of All Pakistan Universities Academic Staff Association (FAPUASA) on Friday asked the government to immediately lift the ban on recruitment and other decisions in public sector universities, or else they would launch a protest campaign.

The decision was taken at an emergency meeting of the association held here with its provincial president Dr Sartaj Alam in the chair. The meeting decided to make a formal demand from the federal government to look into the matter as the provincial government had failed to resolve the issue.

The FAPUASA members would launch a protest drive in the federal capital and would stage protest camps outside Bani Gala, Prime Minister’s House and the Parliament House building if the federal government did not take notice of the situation. The meeting also directed the representative bodies of teaching staff in all the public sector universities in the province to immediately call general body meetings of their respective association and finalize plan for protest campaign. The participants of the meeting said that the decision was not only a blatant violation of the universities’ act and intervention in the autonomous institutions, but it has also badly hampered the academic and administrative functioning of the universities’ concerned.

Khyber Pakhtunkhwa Governor Shah Farman Khan through a letter had recently barred vice-chancellors of 12 public sector universities from taking major decisions and making recruitment in their respective universities. The decision has caused great unrest among the universities and their staffers. The vice-chancellors’ committee in a recent meeting had also criticised the decision. In a meeting held recently they had decision to seek meeting with the governor and inform him of the actual situation. Peshawar University Teachers Association has also expressed its concern over the decision and urged the government to withdraw it at the earliest.

The PUTA believes that the tenure of the vice-chancellor has already been reduced by one year and the naïve decision to stop the vice-chancellors from taking decisions times and again have been adversely affecting the performance of the universities.

The government should deal the matter in a mature manner. “If a vice-chancellor has been appointed for three years, he should be allowed to lead the university for the whole tenure. Stopping him from functioning in the middle of his tenure is a sort of mistrust on its own decisions by the provincial government,” said Dr Fazle Nasir, President PUTA.