Protests threatened over cut in HEC budget

Islamabad ; The Federation of All Pakistan Universities Academic Staff Association (FAPUASA) has expressed concern over a cut in the Higher Education Commission's budgetary allocations for the next fiscal and threatened street protests against it.

It said the universities had demanded Rs150bn non-development budget but the government set aside only Rs66.25 billion non-development budget.

The FAPUASA representatives said they would stage protests against the government for allocating less budget for non-development schemes for the public sector universities.

FAPUASA Punjab president Dr Abdul Sattar Malik and general secretary Dr Ahtisham Ali said the HEC’s recurring budget was frozen once again in the federal budget.

They said the increase in the development budget would help establish new universities but keeping the recurring budget frozen would affect the universities, teachers and students.