Gomal University employees protest for release of salaries

PESHAWAR: The crisis has deepened at the Gomal University Dera Ismail Khan as its teaching and non-teaching staff staged a protest to press the federal and provincial governments to issue a bailout package so that they could get their salaries.

The university is functioning without a vice-chancellor. The provincial government sent vice-chancellor of the university Prof Dr Iftikhar Ahmad on forced leave in mid-September and gave the additional charge to vice-chancellor of newly established Agriculture University Dr Masroor Elahi Babar.

However, the latter was unable to run the office of the university effectively and Peshawar High Court suspended the orders giving him additional charge.

The authorities have yet to give the acting charge of the university to someone else. The university is facing serious administrative and financial problems. The teaching and non-teaching staff has received delayed salaries for the past three months.

Last month, they were given only 60 percent of their salaries and this month they have yet to get salaries. The situation forced them to gather at the auditorium of the main campus of the university to work out a strategy for getting their salaries released.

The protesting employees said that they had no political agenda. They only wanted the financial problems of the university resolved.

“We want salary” was the only slogan that echoed at the spacious auditorium of the university, which was full of the protesting employees.

The protesting employees formed an 18-member committee to hold talks with the high-ups in the provincial and federal governments and the Higher Education Department and Higher Education Commission.

They warned that they would hold protest demonstrations outside the Khyber Pakhtunkhwa Governor’s House and Chief Minister’s House, Higher Education Commission and National Assembly and Banigala residence of former prime minister Imran Khan if the government failed to give a bailout package to the university.