HEC shocked over budget cut

LAHORE:Against its promise of allocating Rs70 billion to the Higher Education Commission (HEC) as recurring grant for fiscal year 2020-2021, the federal government allocated Rs64.1 billion for the Commission for the new fiscal year.

The federal HEC had demanded an allocation of Rs104.789 billion as recurring grant for fiscal year 2020-2021. However, the government promised to allocate Rs70 billion and the same was also shared by the HEC in a press release recently. Nonetheless, when the government presented its budget on Friday it turned out that the Commission had to face a further cut of Rs6 billion. This has come as a surprise for the Commission itself which, according to the sources, has now decided to take up the same with the government seriously.

It is important to mention that the government had allocated Rs64.1 billion for HEC as recurring budget for the 2019-2020 fiscal year which means there is no increase in the recurring grant for the HEC for the new fiscal year.

Similarly, against the demand of Rs42.6 billion as development budget, the federal government allocated Rs29.4 to the Higher Education Commission under the Public Sector Development Programme (PSDP) 2020-2021. However, the current allocation for development is almost Rs400 million more than the allocation for previous fiscal year when the government had allocated slightly over Rs29 billion against the demand of Rs33.5 billion. The HEC had based its budgetary requirements on “funds for universities, pursuing it research agenda, start of several new initiatives including NAHE, ETC, HEMIS, PERU, and P-15 Research Universities, funding for the Tenure Track Faculty, funding for the Pakistan Education and Research Network (PERN), and the resources needed to meet Covid-19 related challenges”.

It is also pertinent to mention that the federal HEC has already decided in principle that due to paucity of funds no new university was being added to recurring grant stream of HEC during fiscal year 2020-2021.

Meanwhile, the Federation of All Pakistan Universities Academic Staff Associations (FAPUASA) has expressed serious concerns over the HEC budget cut. FAPUASA Punjab chapter president Prof Dr Mumtaz Anwar Ch demanded the government allocate budget to the HEC as per its demand to save universities from further crisis.