Teachers rally against IIUI administration

Say university suffers from mismanagement, merit violations, illegal appointments

ISLAMABAD: The faculty of International Islamic University Islamabad (IIUI) rallied on Saturday to protest over various administrative issues, which they said have been affecting them.

The teachers said they had staged the rally against the university administration’s mismanagement, merit violations, illegal appointments, not filling the 300 vacant faculty positions and non- representation of teachers in key decision-making forums.

The demonstration, organised by Academic Staff Association (ASA), started from varsity’s main mosque and ended outside the administration block.



The protesters said the varsity suffers from a series of serious problems such as mismanagement and anti-teacher measures affecting its day-to-day functioning apart from tarnishing its national and international stature.

The association has constantly been pushing the varsity’s management to resolve problems of immediate nature but it seems like they have fallen on deaf ears, they said.

They alleged that the varsity has been lowering the house rent ceiling for its employees which was unacceptable. Moreover, a shortage of teachers in the varsity had forced the Higher Education Commission (HEC) to shut down some MS and PhD programmes but the varsity has yet to fill 300 vacant faculty positions, remarked ASA’s President Dr Abdul Jalil.

Even the selection board process for faculty positions announced three years ago has yet to be completed, he regretted.



The ASA representatives claimed that recently, rules of the varsity were violated in appointing deans of social sciences, sharia and law faculties. “We want merit and rule of law in the university so that quality of education should be improved,” said Dr Munawar Iqbal.

They said that IIUI was the only public sector university of the country where not a single teacher was part of its decision-making forums such as the board of governors or the academic council.

Even minutes of the meeting of the board of trustees have not been provided to faculty members, which was clear violation of right to information. ASA representatives declared that if their demands were not met the protest would be expanded.

Published in The Express Tribune, July 23^rd, 2017.