UoS teachers reject termination of contract

Say to protest policy of visiting faculty

SWABI:

Around 32 teachers of University of Swabi (UoS) have rejected the offer to work as visiting faculty demanding that they are already working on contract basis for several years and they should be made permanent as a rule.

Talking to The Express Tribune they said that 32 teachers were sent to the university on the basis of Interim Placement of fresh Phd (IPP) program in 2016 on a fixed salary of Rs130,000 by the Higher Education Commission (HEC). After one year of service, the university recruited these teachers on contract-basis and as a rule these teachers should have been be given first priority in recruitment but in 2018 the posts were advertised but selection board was not called.

“In 2018 all the teachers should have been recruited on permanent basis but it didn’t happen. Three vice chancellors kept us on contract and now all of a sudden the new VC has announced that the contracts of these teaches will not be renewed from April,” they said, adding that a new policy has been adopted by the VC under which teachers will be recruited as visiting faculty for which they will be paid Rs1,000 per class or Rs36,000 per month.

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“The VC has his own points including over-staffing and lack of funds but if there is over-staffing then there is no need of hiring teachers as visiting faculty,” they added.

“Overall 117 teachers will be affected under this policy and their salary will be reduced from Rs70,000 to Rs36,000 despite the fact that these are Phd teachers rather than primary school teachers,” they added.

Teachers blamed that this was a great loss for students too because their 8th semester is underway which is mainly linked with research and their research is supervised by them while as a visiting faculty they will be only taking classes rather than supervising research.