Elections: Teachers pin high hopes on new KUTS president

Faculty members worried about medical allowance, security and much more.

KARACHI:

Dr Mutahir Ahmad from the University of Karachi Department of International Relations was elected as the president of the KU Teachers Society with 254 votes and Mudassiruddin from the Department of Statistics was elected as the vice president with 252 votes on Saturday.

With 230 votes Haris Shoaib from the Pharmaceutics department secured the position of secretary while Asim Ali from the computer science department became the treasurer with 295 votes and Kishwar Khan and Farhan Ahmed Siddiqui of the general history and computer science departments became joint secretaries with 192 votes each. The Abid Hasnain group has once again won all six posts in the governing body as well as most of the posts in the KUTS executive council. All members of the Abid Hasnain group were also elected for the executive council, except for one seat that was taken by the KU Teachers Guild.

The KUTS holds elections every year to fill six posts of the governing body and elect 15 members for the executive council. There were three groups contesting the elections this year, the Karachi University Teachers Guild, the Teachers Association and the Abid Hasnain group, which has been winning for the last couple of years.

Official sources told The Express Tribune that there are nearly 700 teachers at the university and around 503 came to vote this year.

Who they vote for and why

Faculty members at the university claim that there is a massive shortage of teachers. Department of Pharmaceutical Chemistry chairman and associate professor Dr Fayyaz Vaid claims that there are not enough teachers, especially since new academic courses had been added. “When they launched the Bachelor’s in Science programme in 2007, the administration had promised us a proper infrastructure which included teaching staff and laboratories,” he said.

Most teachers are also concerned with the allotment of the teacher’s residences at the campus. A teacher told The Express Tribune that no development had been made for teachers’ residences in the last 25 years. “I want a representative who can stand up to the vice chancellor for our rights and interests,” he said. “I believe that Mutahir Ahmed has the ability to do so.”

The teachers are also demanding an increase in their PhD allowance. While government employed doctorate teachers in Punjab get a monthly allowance of Rs10,000, the allowance in Sindh is still Rs5,000.

According to Dr Vaid, they plan to tackle security and medical issues as well. “Everyone at the university needs security while the teaching and non-teaching staff are suffering because of irregular and incomplete medical allowance arrangements,” he said. “Our role is to design the policy, it is the administration’s job to implement it.”

Published in The Express Tribune, October 30^th, 2011.