Four years on, PM yet to approve HEC members

Commission meeting not held since February last year

ISLAMABAD: It has been more than four years and the Higher Education Commission (HEC), which oversees over 100 public sector universities, has yet to get the attention of the prime minister for the appointment of his nominees as members of its governing body that has become virtually ineffective.

Since coming into power in 2013, the government of the Pakistan Muslim League-Nawaz (PML-N) and its two prime ministers, first Nawaz Sharif and now Shahid Khaqan Abbasi, have not paid attention to the appointment of the members of the commission that gets over Rs90 billion annual budget. The prime minister is the controlling authority of the HEC.



According to the HEC Ordinance 2002, the board running the HEC consists of 18 members — two federal secretaries, four representatives of the provinces, an executive director, one vice chancellor and 10 nominees of the prime minister.

Currently, the commission has only 10 members and eight have yet to be appointed by the PM. Objections have been raised to the names forwarded in this regard several times.

Now the situation has come to the point where the commission’s meetings cannot be called because the required number of members is not available. The quorum for a meeting is nine members.



Meetings of the commission are held to take policy decisions about higher education in the country and approve the budget and appointments made and decisions taken by the chairperson.

How infrequently the commission meets can be gauged from the fact in one meeting in September 2014 it approved the revised budget estimates for the financial years 2012-13 and 2013-14 and the estimate for 2014-15.

As per the ordinance, there should be at least two meetings a year but only four have been held since the incumbent government took charge. The last meeting of the commission was held in February last year.



“The commission shall also submit to the controlling authority after the end of every year a report on the state of higher education and on its activities during that year,” the ordinance states.

So far, the commission has submitted only one report for 2013-14 to the PM during the period, while the rest could not be shared due to the irregular meeting schedules and incomplete panel.

On the other hand, a perception in the HEC is growing that the incomplete commission and lack of meetings favours the top management, which considered it a hurdle to get everything approved from the governing body.



But HEC Chairperson Dr Mukhtar Ahmed does not agree with the perception. “I do not approve of such thinking rather I support the professional and experienced members in the commission to make it a better forum for the higher education sector,” he told The Express Tribune.

Officials in the HEC also blame a former education secretary for needlessly delaying the approval of the names from the PM Office. The Ministry of Federal Education and Professional Training is the line ministry for the HEC.

“Last year I personally talked to the PM’s personal secretary about the delay in approval of commission members and he agreed to go about it but nothing happened,” the HEC chief maintained, adding that his organisation was following up on the issue with the ministry.



The dilly-delaying in the appointments to vacant positions of the commission’s members has continued since April 2013 when the HEC forwarded new names to the education ministry.

The list was rejected because of including people over the age of 62 and new names were sought.

After a hiatus of over a year, a few names were forwarded but that list was termed outdated and a new list was sought.



“Now we have submitted a final list with the names of education experts who are below 62 years of age so that they can complete their three-year tenure by the age of 65,” the HEC chief said.

He expressed hope that the issue of the completion of the commission would soon be resolved and the names would be approved by the prime minister.