The tale of CIEC’s remiss functioning

The Charter Inspection and Evaluation Committee (CIEC), a body formed to grade and monitor Sindh’s public and private universities and recommend chartering of private universities, appears to have failed miserably in its objectives thus far.

Despite seven years of its current head of legislation, the department is yet to initiate the process of monitoring, evaluation and ranking of nearly two dozen public universities in the province, for which it lacks any system or mechanism. In addition to that, claims against the department also allege various irregularities in its formation of committees for the classification of Sindh’s private universities.

It is to be noted that the second term of Charter Inspection and Evaluation Committee Head Dr Qadeer Rajput, is coming to an end sometime around mid-January. He was first appointed by former Sindh Governor Dr Ishratul Ebad Khan. For the second term, his approval came from the provincial cabinet some two years ago, but Dr Rajput, despite the committee’s degradation under his headship, is now seen leaping a third term.

It may be recalled that the Charter Inspection and Evaluation Committee was set up in 2002. At that time, the committee’s function was limited to reviewing the establishment of new private universities and degree awarding institutes in Sindh, and to recommend the charter to the government. Later, it also adopted the process of inspecting and ranking private universities across the province.

When the Sindh Government established the Sindh Higher Education Commission (HEC) under an Assembly Act in 2013, the Charter Inspection and Evaluation Committee was subordinated to the Provincial Commission through legislation. It was also made a subsidiary of the Sindh HEC, due to which its powers were now limited to inspection and ranking of the province’s public and private varsities.

However, it appears that in these seven years, the committee has neither inspected a single government university, nor bothered framing a mechanism for performing its duties within the limits granted by the Assembly.

More importantly, according to the committee’s 2002 ordinance, only vicechancellors of certain public universities were allowed to be members of the body. These included, Vice-chancellors of Karachi University, Jinnah Sindh Medical University, Sindh Agricultural University Tandojam and Mehran University, apart from chairperson CIEC, who were to be permanent members of the committee.

 A significant issue stemming from the committee’s ordinance has recently come to fore. Since the committee also has the legal power to inspect and grade Sindh’s public universities, the notion of committee-member vice-chancellors inspecting and ranking their own institutions has now started raising several questions.

Addressing the department’s long pending tasks Charter Inspection and Evaluation Committee Chairperson Dr Qadeer Rajput said that he had the ‘Performa’ for inspection and ranking of public universities approved by Sindh HEC, but situations arising due to the rise of Covid-19 have halted the process.

However, when asked about the reasons for delay in years prior to Covid-19 and the lack of operation framework, it appeared that the chairperson had no sound explanations to offer. “The present committee cannot inspect public universities. Now only Dr. Asim Hussain, the head of Sindh HEC, will tell who will inspect the government universities,” he instead told The Express Tribune.