TTS faculty protests ‘no pay raise in years’

The Tenured Track System (TTS) faculty members working at public sector universities across the country Tuesday staged a protest outside the Higher Education Commission (HEC) Secretariat, Islamabad against the non-increase of their salaries for many years.

A significant number of teachers gathered at the protest site to press the authorities for acceptance of their demands including an increase in their salaries up to 50 per cent. They claimed that the salaries had not been increased for many years which put them in difficult economic circumstances in the age of massive inflation.

“It is highly discriminatory that we only got some minor increase in our salaries only thrice in the past 20 years,” the protesting teachers lamented.

The protestors also demanded that the method of increment of salary for TTS faculty members should be fixed at the same rate as government employees, adding that the heirs of teachers who passed away during their service should be paid 50 per cent of their salary until retirement.

Besides improvement in the pension policy of the TTS faculty, they requested that the government restore their salaries accounts that have been suspended for two years.

The protestors also criticised the relevant HEC authorities, including its chairman, ‘for not being serious to resolve their issues’.

They called off the protest temporarily when HEC authorities assured them to take up their issue with the government in a serious manner. The HEC officials informed them that a letter has already been sent to the government, asking it to address the issue.

As per details, the said teachers had also staged such protests in the past which produced no results.

According to the HEC, the TTS was introduced in 2002, as part of the strategy for improving the quality of education. The objective was to attract better-qualified faculty members and recognise and reward superior performance.

The first version of the TTS statutes was developed in 2003 and adopted and implemented by a few universities in 2005. Over time, the statutes were amended to address remaining gaps and cater to local conditions. The final version was approved in 2008 and updated this year.

Before TTS, all faculty members in public sector universities were on the BPS (Basic Pay Scale) system. This system was viewed as insufficiently attractive because of low salaries and a lack of performance incentives.

Ex-HEC chairman Dr Tariq Banuri says the TTS introduced a competitive system for recruitment, promotion, and tenure which led to some success, most importantly a change in the mindset of academia towards research output and competitiveness.

This mindset has affected not only those formally enrolled in the TTS system but also those in the BPS system as well as the students planning their future careers, he said.

Published in The Express Tribune, July 19^th, 2023.