PUTA accuses UoP admin of harassment

PESHAWAR: The Peshawar University Teachers Association (PUTA) on Monday criticised the University of Peshawar (UoP) administration for calling teachers to vice-chancellor’s office in an alleged bid to threaten and force them to sign a kind of affidavit against the association’s general body’s decisions.

An emergency meeting of the association urged the university’s registrar to play his role being a senior teacher of the university for saving his fellow teachers against the “highhandedness and workplace harassment”.

The PUTA in its recently held general body meeting had unanimously decided that the members of the association would not take extra classes under the self-support programme for which the university has not made payments during the past three years.

PUTA President Dr Fazle Nasir told The News that the students studying under the self-support programme had paid fees in advance but the teachers had not received dues for three years. The PUTA general body decided that unless the university ensured timely payment to teachers, they would not take further (extra) classes, he added.

Such teachers were nearly two dozen in number. The decision infuriated the university administration and it started calling these teachers one by one and they were literally harassed at the vice-chancellor’s office, one such teacher told this reporter. “The vice-chancellor was literally threatening me during the meeting. He was frequently pointing his fingers to me, saying that he would report the issue to the chancellor and he would take action against us,” he alleged.

Dr Fazle Nasir said that they would hold a meeting with the vice-chancellor today (Tuesday) to discuss the issue. “We hope the meeting would yield positive results or else we would work out next line of action,” he said.