Kohat varsity asks girl students to wear abaya

The new dress code is implemented from March 15

KOHAT:

After the Hazara University Abbotabad, Bacha Khan University Charsadda and University of Peshawar, the Kohat University of Science and Technology (KUST) has also introduced a dress code, asking its girl students to wear black abaya.

In a notification issued on March 9, the KUST administration directed its male students to either wear white shalwar qamees or grey dress pants with black shoes.

Girl students have been asked to wear white shalwar with any qamees of full sleeves, scarf, dupata, chaddar, black abaya and black shoes. In the winters they have to wear black sweater, coat or plain jacket with abaya of black colour.

Furthermore the faculty members have been directed to wear formal dress with black gown in the classes.

This policy has been implemented from the spring semester March 15, 2021.

Talking to The Express Tribune an official of the KUST said that the new dress code or uniform had been introduced on the directives of Governor Shah Farman who has asked all the varsities in the province to introduce sober dress code especially for their female students.

Earlier skin tight jeans, shorts, earrings and make-up were banned by the University of Hazara which invited widespread criticism on social media. Similarly, BKU Charsadda even asked its staff not to wear jeans. After the criticism, the UOP issued a clever notification regarding the dress code. It simply asked the girl students to wear shalwar qamees instead of mentioning jeans or tights or shorts. This pattern was also followed by KUST in order to avoid attention.

The KUST official said that Governor Shah Farman wanted a conservative dress code for the university students and universities were just obeying the instruction.

“It is strange that nearly all the 39 public sector universities in the K-P are facing a severe economic crisis as they are even unable to pay their employees and instead of correcting it, the governor is asking universities to ban tights and jeans on their campuses,” he said, adding that due to the economic crisis the standard of education had been negatively impacted across the province but no one was there to pay heed to it.

“I think that the PTI government is trying to take the attention away from this economic crisis in the universities by introducing such foolish things like dress codes etc,” he said, adding that Kohat was already a conservative district where girls wear shalwar qamees but now they had been asked to wear uniforms.

Published in The Express Tribune, March 19^th, 2021.