Finance Minister Dr Hafeez and Deputy Chairman Planning Commission Dr Nadeemul Haq have suggested to 68 vice chancellors of the universities who assembled at Higher Education Commission (HEC) to ponder over various steps such as increase in fee of students, utility of universities land for business activities and establishing contacts with business communities to run various faculties and generate funds as per the best practices being followed in the world.
They even refused to honour 50 per cent raise of university employees’ salaries as announced in the budget and asked the vice chancellors to run the universities with some business plans and fix their own salaries.
Some vice chancellors during the tense and charged atmosphere in the HEC auditorium communicated to the finance minister that they would close down their universities by 20th of this month, as they did not have enough financial resources to run the universities.
They lamented that instead of diverting Rs95 billion earmarked for Benazir Income Support Programme and IDPs for the rehabilitation of the flood-affected areas, the government had slashed the PSDP and the budget for higher education.
The government earlier scaled down the allocation for higher education to Rs15.7 billion, of which Rs1 billion were released in the first quarter and in the second quarter only Rs700 million was released. If this trend continues, the government would release the same amount in the remaining two quarters, which comes up to Rs3 billion against the allocated Rs15.7 billion. “It is tantamount to murdering the higher education,” they said.
They argued that allocation for higher education was not expenditure, but investment on a long-term basis. Pakistan needed quality human resources to run the affairs of the country, which could only be possible if funds for higher education were not disrupted.
The vice chancellors from Khyber-Pakhtunkhwa and Balochistan said they were working under the threat of terrorism as militants had kidnapped one of the VCs and some university teachers were murdered in Balochistan, but now that they were facing threats from the federal government. “We have become the vulnerable class,” they lament.
They further said: “The contractors of some of the projects are demanding money, which we don’t have. Our students abroad are facing difficulties in the wake of non-provision of funds to them.”
All the VCs threatened to resign if their funds were not released. Vice Chancellor of Balochistan University Ghulam Nabi said that in the next couple of months he would have no money to pay the salaries. Some VCs said that the Parliament had become an industry and MPs were making money and getting richer, but they were not paying attention to the education sector.
Meanwhile, the Federation of the All Pakistan Universities Academic Staff Associations (FAPUASA) has announced a complete strike on September 22 to protest against the refusal of Finance Minister Dr Hafeez Sheikh to release the funding for higher education.
It also appealed to teachers of all the universities in the country to make the protest successful. The FAPUASA also warned to expand the protest if the government did not force the top financial authorities to realise their duties to the nation.
Strongly condemning the finance minister’s statement, Dr Mahr Saeed Akhtar, President FAPUASA, and General Secretary Prof Kaleemullah Bareach asked the government on Friday to dismiss Abdul Hafeez Sheikh forthwith “who does not know that education is a pre-requisite to progress, development and prosperity”. They said that most of the students coming to public-sector universities belonged to poor and middle classes. They observed that Dr Hafeez should know that 70 percent people in Pakistan not only belong to villages but are also living below the poverty line.
The Academic Staff Associations of Quaid-i-Azam University, International Islamic University, Allama Iqbal Open University and National University of Modern Languages also expressed their support to the stand adopted by 68 VCs and the FAPUASA call for the strike.
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