CIIT — the bigger stakeholder in NTS

Institute has staff members employed as directors in the National Testing Service

ISLAMABAD: Despite being a public entity, Comsats Institute of Information Technology (CIIT) has established the National Testing Service (NTS), employing most of its staff members as directors.

According to documents available with The Express Tribune, the NTS was not primarily set up as a body to conduct tests, neither was any such thing mentioned in its ordinance. Interestingly, there was no mention of the formulation of the NTS in the CIIT’s board of governors (BoG) meeting until 2009.

The NTS was registered in 2003 with the Securities and Exchange Commission of Pakistan (SECP) under Section 42 of the Companies Ordinance, 1984, as a private limited company.



Similarly, the directors were also not appointed by BoG and there was no mention in the ordinance that they were employees of the CIIT. Junaid Zaidi, who is the rector of the CIIT since 2002, is only mentioned with an occupation of information technology and IT education management. Mohammad Haroon Rasheed, currently pro-rector of the CIIT, who was then director at the university, was also specified with the same occupation.

It was for the first time only in 2009 that in a supplementary agenda presented before the BoG’s 15th meeting it mentioned the NTS. “NTS is an autonomous and self-sustained body governed by BoG of the CIIT,” reads the agenda. The organogram also shows the management committee of the NTS working under BoG.

It also contains that “the NTS has the patronage of the Higher Education Commission,” but it proved wrong when, on March 23, 2014, the Lahore High Court ordered the higher education body not to sponsor or extend patronage to the NTS, “as it was not an officially approved national service.” In August 2012, the BoG endorsed the NTS management committee’s decision of March 2012 to register the latter as a not-for-profit organisation.



Legal questions

To everyone’s surprise, in May 2013, instead of creating a new body under the CIIT, the old one was revived as NTS with replacement of Dr Izhar Hussain and Dr Shahid Khan as directors. In August 16, 2013 and March 2015, BoG sought legal position regarding CIIT’s jurisdiction over the NTS. Raja Abid Hussain, a lawyer, opined that the board “cannot supervise day-to-day affairs (of NTS)… as it is a totally separate legal entity.”

Criticism

The NTS has an 8 kanal plot on government land under the plea of being a “national” service institution. While on August 28, 2012, registrar CIIT notified transfer of all assets and liabilities of the NTS to a private ownership, to the chief executive officer of the NTS—Haroon Rashid.

The management of the CIIT has been sharing conflicting details about the finances of the CIIT and members of the BoG. Interestingly, 10 out of 19 members of BoG work at the CIIT and directly report to the rector.

In September 2015, the NTS management told a Senate body that test fee receipts had increased to Rs1.1 billion in 2014 from Rs191 million in 2013. Further investigations were called into the accounts of the NTS but political moves have always made it impossible to allow the body for open discussion in parliament and its committees.



Zaidi told an NA body last week that they were planning to approach the Federal Board of Revenue (FBR) for the tax exemption of NTS. When contacted, the CIIT Rector Junaid Zaidi declined by saying he does not give interviews, while registrar Izhar Hussain of the varsity said he would contact this newspaper for the interview. He, however, did not get back despite repeated calls and text messages.

 

Published in The Express Tribune, May 8^th, 2016.