50% decrease in HEC budget sets alarm bells ringing

Minister says no such plan under consideration

KARACHI:

Higher Education Commission Executive Director Dr Shaista Sohail has written a letter to the federal education secretary amid reports of a 50 per cent cut in the funding for public universities.

In the letter, the HEC director urged the government to revise its decision. It added that according to official reports, it was being said that the government would allocate a mere Rs30 billion to the education commission against the demand of Rs104 billion.

The HEC director said the proposal for the grant of over Rs100 billion was shared with the government in light of its growing needs. Currently, there were 100 public universities, 18 universities were being established whereas 49 institutes were being funded by the HEC.

In a reference to the previous budget of Rs66.25 billion, the HEC director said that the budget allocated by the government could only meet 28 per cent of needs of the higher education and the rest of the funding was managed by the commission itself in addition to the funds provided by the provincial governments.

It reminded that the Rs15 billion grant announced by the government had not been provided to the HEC despite multiple reminders and added that the budget currently being planned for financial year 2022-23 would not be enough to meet the needs of the commission and, if not reviewed, it would adversely impact the youth along with an increase in unemployment.

The letter also revealed that the university grants range since 2016 were “0% to 0.14% of the country's GDP”. It added that along with an increase in the salaries of teachers and pensions, it was difficult for the HEC to meet its needs embroiling the public higher education into a worse financial crisis.

In a letter to BUITEMS, the education commission barred the provincial universities from paying house rent ceilings to their employees since the facility was only available to the employees of the federal universities.

Read VCs are appointed under pressure, claims HEC chief

The decision was taken in the “wake of irregularities observed on the payment of inadmissible allowances, perks and privileges during the external audit of public sector universities”.

Apart from the other recommendations of the sub-committee, House Rent Ceiling/Requisitions was declared as inadmissible to the employees of the provincially chartered universities as per the government's 'Accommodation Allocation Rules 2022', according to which it is only admissible to employees serving in basic pay scales in the federal government, the letter added.

“During the budgetary assessment of universities for 2022-23, which was carried out jointly with the finance ministry in Feb-March 22 at ICT and all provincial headquarters, it was observed with great concern that few of the provincially chartered universities are also paying house rent ceilings to their employees,” it added.

It asked the university administrations to stop the allowances since it was not for provincially chartered institutes. "However, they are all entitled to the house rent allowance 45 per cent in metropolitan and 30 per cent in other cities as revised by the respective provincial governments from time to time,” it added.

Meanwhile, Minister for Planning and Development Ahsan Iqbal on Friday said that despite the worst economic crisis in the country, the government would not reduce budget of the HEC in the upcoming fiscal year.

Chairing a meeting to review the HEC matters, the minister said the government was allocating more funds than what the HEC demanded.

(With additional input from APP)