Education woes: Newly appointed BKU VC fails to produce documents
Documents show he was probed for sexual harassment
When contacted, BKU Spokesperson Saeed Khan Khalil rejected all the accusations. PHOTO: UNAIN.INFO
PESHAWAR:
In a surprising move, the Bacha Khan University in Charsadda has appointed a professor who has been indicted for sexual harassment of women at workplace, apart from failing to provide some requisite documents.
On June 9, 2017, the Khyber-Pakhtunkhwa government had appointed Professor Dr Saqlain Naqvi, professor and Dean of Faculty of Sciences in Arid Agricultural University in Rawalpindi, as the vice chancellor of the varsity for three years.
According to the university’s rules, it is mandatory for a vice chancellor to submit details of his last pay and a clearance certificate from the last university where he had been working.
In this regards, the Bacha Khan University (BKU) had written to the Arid Agricultural University to issue a clearance certificate and last pay certificate. But the Rawalpindi-based university on July 7 wrote back to BKU that they cannot issue the clearance certificates owing to different reasons.
The letter, a copy of which is available with The Express Tribune, stated that Prof Naqvi had bypassed the prescribed channel of correspondence, falsely accusing his supervisors - evident from his absence from personal hearing and wasting precious time of officers of administration department. Moreover, the letter said that a case of harassment against the professor was pending adjudication before the Punjab Ombudsman after having been penalized by the federal ombudsman for similar charges.
Senior officials of BKU had also expressed their reservations over Prof Naqvi’s appointment, stating that it would be detrimental to the reputation of the university.
A university official, speaking on condition of anonymity, revealed that Prof. Naqvi sacked former-registrar Muhammad Ali this week after he asked him to submit the documents required by the university. The official added that while the usual salary of the vice chancellor was Rs0.3 million, Prof Naqvi had demanded Rs0.6 million.
Published in The Express Tribune, August 1st, 2017.
In a surprising move, the Bacha Khan University in Charsadda has appointed a professor who has been indicted for sexual harassment of women at workplace, apart from failing to provide some requisite documents.
On June 9, 2017, the Khyber-Pakhtunkhwa government had appointed Professor Dr Saqlain Naqvi, professor and Dean of Faculty of Sciences in Arid Agricultural University in Rawalpindi, as the vice chancellor of the varsity for three years.
According to the university’s rules, it is mandatory for a vice chancellor to submit details of his last pay and a clearance certificate from the last university where he had been working.
In this regards, the Bacha Khan University (BKU) had written to the Arid Agricultural University to issue a clearance certificate and last pay certificate. But the Rawalpindi-based university on July 7 wrote back to BKU that they cannot issue the clearance certificates owing to different reasons.
The letter, a copy of which is available with The Express Tribune, stated that Prof Naqvi had bypassed the prescribed channel of correspondence, falsely accusing his supervisors - evident from his absence from personal hearing and wasting precious time of officers of administration department. Moreover, the letter said that a case of harassment against the professor was pending adjudication before the Punjab Ombudsman after having been penalized by the federal ombudsman for similar charges.
Senior officials of BKU had also expressed their reservations over Prof Naqvi’s appointment, stating that it would be detrimental to the reputation of the university.
A university official, speaking on condition of anonymity, revealed that Prof. Naqvi sacked former-registrar Muhammad Ali this week after he asked him to submit the documents required by the university. The official added that while the usual salary of the vice chancellor was Rs0.3 million, Prof Naqvi had demanded Rs0.6 million.
Published in The Express Tribune, August 1st, 2017.