QAU could not pay raise in salaries

Islamabad: Quaid-i-Azam University was not able to pay recent increase in salary and pension to its faculty and employees whether serving or retired because of paucity of funds.

The government announced a 10 per cent raise in salary and pension of government servants and employees of autonomous organisations in the 2021-22 budget. This was the first increase since the PTI government assumed power in August 2018. The payment was due in the July salary of the QAU serving and retired staff but the university could not add the increase even in the salary of August.

A source in the QAU administration revealed that the government announces increases without providing corresponding amount in the budget of the university for the purpose.

The source hoped that the increased salary with the arears will be paid with the salary of September. Answering a question, the source said that students pay fees for the next semester in the month of September and the QAU authorities expect that the fees will generate enough funding to enable the university to pay the salary and pension to the staff.

It may be mentioned that to pay an honorarium to the faculty members for teaching extra course and to the visiting teachers, the university used to wait for the fees of the students to pay the honorarium in the past some years.

Dr Hasan Mahmood, President of the Academic Staff Association, QAU, talking to this scribe said that Ministry of Finance should provide funding to the government and autonomous institutions whenever announcing new scales or increase for the faculty just like Higher Education Commission on Tenure Track System. He regretted that despite so much inflation, the government only increased just 10 per cent in the last three years.