Dampening the mood: Salaries of employees to be late due to delay in funds

For the first time in its history, NED University fails to issue salaries to its facultry at the outset of a month.

KARACHI:

For the first time in its history, NED University of Engineering and Technology will fail to issue salaries to its academics and officers at the outset of a month - March 1, 2013.

The university failed to receive its monthly due of Rs74 million from the ministry of finance till the end of February, confirmed the university’s finance director Muhammad Sajeeruddin when The Express Tribune contacted him on Thursday. “We have never stalled salaries - not even for a day,” said Sajeeruddin. “Several cuts in the university budget and relentless delays in disbursement of funds over the last couple of years, however, have made us feel helpless now.”

Each month, the university pays Rs87 million in salaries to its employees and an additional Rs30 million is the running expenditure for each month. The funds of Rs74 million, for which the university receives a cheque every month, fail to even cover that amount of salaries. The director finance, however, said that the salaries worth Rs35 million for the lower staff of grades between one and 15 were managed through the university’s internal resources and a certain amount of loan. “This was done at the expense of those officers and academics who  would be paid when the cheque arrives,” he said. “If this situation persists, the university officials have reached to the consensus that running affairs of the university will not be possible.”

Meanwhile, the KU finance director, Qazi Zafar Abbas, told The Express Tribune upon contact that their monthly due of Rs116 million had also not arrived this month.

Published in The Express Tribune, March 1^st, 2013.