Lasbela university students turn to Karachi to have their degrees recognised
Registrar calls protesting students ‘failures’, denies any recognition issues.
KARACHI:
Not a single graduate of the Faculty of Veterinary and Animal Sciences at the Lasbela University of Agriculture, Water and Marine Sciences, in Balochistan, has been properly recognised as a qualified veterinarian.
Students of the department came to the press club on Tuesday to register their protest against the “apathetic behaviour of the administration” that has rendered their Doctor of Veterinary Medicine (DVM) degree worthless.
The Pakistan Veterinary Medical Council is not recognising the university’s degrees due to the lack of resources, proper teaching faculty and equipment, students told The Express Tribune.
The university was established in 2005 and the Faculty of Veterinary and Animal Sciences is one of the very few institutes in the country producing veterinary doctors.
However, the administration is not doing anything for the recognition of the degrees, allege students. One of them said that almost all of the department’s students, enrolled and graduated, are on hunger strike and have been staging sit-ins outside the campus but the administration is not budging.
Fourth-year student Sher Baloch explained that the department is required to have four associate professors, 12 lecturers and six professors. For practice, clinics and a cattle and poultry farm are also mandatory. However, there are only 10 teachers and a cattle farm was recently built. There are no clinics and no poultry farm, even after almost six years, Sher Baloch said. “The faculty and all the department heads are retired people, including the vice chancellor.”
Another student, Amir Baloch, objected that the administration sends its favourites from the human resource department on HEC scholarships. “How did they qualify when they were not even students? They did not sit the HEC scholarship test either,” he said. “Why are our funds going into the wrong hands? Had the funds been used for us even once, we would have had all the equipment needed and would have received PVMC recognition up till now.”
Sher Baloch said the students have been protesting for years.
Lasbela University’s registrar Sher Ahmed Qambrani told The Express Tribune that there is no such issue at the university. “The first graduate batch has now received recognition by the PVMC.” He negated the student concerns by saying that they were just a bunch of failures who wanted the university to retake their exams and when they did not comply, they created a fuss in front of the media.
The registrar said the protests were useless as the second batch has not graduated yet and there is a lot of time before their degrees are recognised. About the ‘over-age’ faculty, he said that a medical practitioner “never retires”.
However, Sher Baloch countered, “The degrees of the first batch students were only recognised conditionally after they sat the council’s test. What’s the point of giving five years of your life to such a degree?”
Published in The Express Tribune, May 6th, 2011.
Not a single graduate of the Faculty of Veterinary and Animal Sciences at the Lasbela University of Agriculture, Water and Marine Sciences, in Balochistan, has been properly recognised as a qualified veterinarian.
Students of the department came to the press club on Tuesday to register their protest against the “apathetic behaviour of the administration” that has rendered their Doctor of Veterinary Medicine (DVM) degree worthless.
The Pakistan Veterinary Medical Council is not recognising the university’s degrees due to the lack of resources, proper teaching faculty and equipment, students told The Express Tribune.
The university was established in 2005 and the Faculty of Veterinary and Animal Sciences is one of the very few institutes in the country producing veterinary doctors.
However, the administration is not doing anything for the recognition of the degrees, allege students. One of them said that almost all of the department’s students, enrolled and graduated, are on hunger strike and have been staging sit-ins outside the campus but the administration is not budging.
Fourth-year student Sher Baloch explained that the department is required to have four associate professors, 12 lecturers and six professors. For practice, clinics and a cattle and poultry farm are also mandatory. However, there are only 10 teachers and a cattle farm was recently built. There are no clinics and no poultry farm, even after almost six years, Sher Baloch said. “The faculty and all the department heads are retired people, including the vice chancellor.”
Another student, Amir Baloch, objected that the administration sends its favourites from the human resource department on HEC scholarships. “How did they qualify when they were not even students? They did not sit the HEC scholarship test either,” he said. “Why are our funds going into the wrong hands? Had the funds been used for us even once, we would have had all the equipment needed and would have received PVMC recognition up till now.”
Sher Baloch said the students have been protesting for years.
Lasbela University’s registrar Sher Ahmed Qambrani told The Express Tribune that there is no such issue at the university. “The first graduate batch has now received recognition by the PVMC.” He negated the student concerns by saying that they were just a bunch of failures who wanted the university to retake their exams and when they did not comply, they created a fuss in front of the media.
The registrar said the protests were useless as the second batch has not graduated yet and there is a lot of time before their degrees are recognised. About the ‘over-age’ faculty, he said that a medical practitioner “never retires”.
However, Sher Baloch countered, “The degrees of the first batch students were only recognised conditionally after they sat the council’s test. What’s the point of giving five years of your life to such a degree?”
Published in The Express Tribune, May 6th, 2011.