Teachers protest against education budget cuts
Dozens of Punjab University and University of Engineering and Technology teachers participated in the demonstration, wearing black armbands and shouting slogans denouncing the government’s education policies, particularly its decision to cut the Higher Education Commission (HEC) budget.
Teachers and students also boycotted activities at the PU and UET campuses to observe a ‘black day’ organised by the Federation of All Pakistan Academic Staff Associations (FAPASA).
The FAPASA threatened to stage a sit-in in front of the National Assembly on Constitution Avenue and demonstrations in cities all over the country if the federal government did not meet their three major demands by September 24.
These demands are that the government release funding for HEC-sponsored PhD scholars at universities abroad for the first three months of the academic year; release funds for HEC projects that are 90 percent complete; and raise the salaries of teachers by 50 percent.
The federal cabinet approved the first two of these demands during a meeting later in the day, but ruled out the 50 percent pay raise, Education Minister Sardar Asseff Ahmad Ali and Information Minister Qamruz Zaman Kaira told a press conference.
Ali criticised the teachers’ protests, saying they were pushing students to protest on the streets for selfish reasons, meaning the 50 per cent pay raise.
He said the federal government had frozen the current expenditure of all departments amidst a financial crunch and so the teachers’ demand for a pay raise was inappropriate.
Prof Mahar Saeed Akhtar, the FAPASA president, rejected the minister’s criticism. Speaking to The Express Tribune, he accused the cabinet of “deceiving the nation” by presenting “fake figures” in connection with the HEC budget. He said that almost all the laboratories in public universities were short of chemicals and equipment while thousands of Pakistani PhD students in universities abroad were “begging in the streets and mosques” to make ends meet.
Prof Akhtar made other demands on the teachers’ behalf in a speech to the protesters outside the Press Club. He demanded that the government revise its decision to halve the HEC budget; sack the finance minister for “humiliating vice chancellors and professors”; increase the education budget to match the budget of the Benazir Income Support Programme (Rs90 billion); keep tuition fees at their current level; abolish self-finance schemes in public universities; and stop giving financial support to private universities.
Dr Zafar Noon, the FAPASA’s Punjab president, told the participants that teachers in Peshawar, Karachi, Hyderabad, Jamshoro, Multan, Quetta, Rawalpindi, Islamabad, Faisalabad, Sargodha, Azad Kashmir, DI Khan, Bahawalpur and Taxila had also observed the black day.
Published in The Express Tribune, September 23rd, 2010.
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