Financial crisis of KP varsities deepens

PESHAWAR: Financial crisis in public sector universities worsened as the historic Islamia College University also joined a number of other institutions by showing its inability to pay full salaries and pensions to its employees.

A formal notification to this effect was issued on Saturday. The notification reads: “It is notified for information of all concerned that due to the financial constraints, the university is unable to pay full salaries and pensions to its employees for the month of May 2021 as payable on June 1, 2021. Consequently, only basic pay and 50 percent pension would be disbursed for May. Inconvenience is regretted.”

Before Islamia College, the University of Peshawar, Agriculture University Peshawar and Gomal University Dera Ismail Khan have remained unable to pay full salaries to their employees. These universities kept asking the provincial government and the Higher Education Commission to give them a kind of bailout package to overcome their financial crisis. The provincial government did release some grants to these institutions from time to time, but those were insufficient to overcome the massive financial problems they were confronting.

The provincial government also directed the universities to improve their financial management and resolve the issue. The universities were also directed to reduce salaries of employees, downsize the strength of employees and cut their allowances.

These directives sparked strong reactions for the university employees who have launched a massive protest drive to press the government to withdraw the directives.

Islamia College Peshawar is no doubt one of the oldest educational institutions of the province, which was established in 2013 and upgraded to the university level in 2009. During its 110 years history the institution had never seen such severe financial crunch due to which it had to show its inability to pay salaries and pensions.

The college also owned costly properties in different parts of the country. But those properties have either been usurped by people or they have not been brought into effective use to make an appropriate contribution to the finances of the college.