Pakistan

Govt releases Rs1.2b; HEC says not enough

Panel says amount would just pay salaries for July-Sept.

Shahbaz Rana October 05, 2010

The Higher Education Commission (HEC) remained firm in carrying on its protest despite the government’s move to pay Rs1.2 billion which the commission needed to pay university staff salaries for the first quarter of the current financial year. The commission says the money was not enough to make it call off its Tuesday’s strike.

The government action was clearly an attempt to allay the worries of the angry alliance of faculty members of 72 universities, showing that the government was committed to resolving their financial problems.

HEC’s Executive Director Dr Sohail Naqvi said that the amount would just help pay the staff salaries for the July-September period. He said that the government had also assured the commission about the release of a second installment of equal amount soon, enabling them to pay the salaries till December.

“The Federation of All Pakistan Universities Academic Staff Association is of the view that the government is not delivering on its promises. Thus, the faculty would go on strike today (Tuesday),” said Mr Farooq, the president of the NUML Academic Staff Association.

Dr Naqvi said that the government told the HEC on Monday that Rs5.6 billion more would be released soon to meet current expenditure. The amount also includes Rs1.2 billion for paying the 50 per cent raised salaries. He said Rs3.2 was released on Friday that would help pay for students’ scholarships.

Financial problems have put the future of 14,000 doctorate students at risk. Of the total, 5,000 students are studying abroad. However, the government has indicated that it would protect the scholarships.

The government has drastically cut HEC funds: this year, the government has allocated Rs19 billion less than its actual needs. The commission’s budgetary allocation of Rs15.8 billion is also under the threat of being cut.

Published in The Express Tribune, October 5th, 2010.

COMMENTS (2)

Ahmer Ali | 13 years ago | Reply Assalam-o-Allaikum Warahmatullah.The biggest prejudicial and hypocritical face of present leaders in other words effrontery that they are spending less money than the spent money on their ministers and advisers army whereas in advanced countries a huge amount of money is spent on education and research work but the facts are against it in Pakistan.In Pakistan billions of Rupees are spent on the army of ministers and advisers including PM and President on the name of allowances and TADA but on education and research work our leaders have only few billions and after giving few billions to education sector our leaders still emphasize on education sector to work in the best ways.How foolish and ridiculous our leaders are!

Faisal Arshad | 13 years ago | Reply So this is what leaders of highest seat of learning appears to hold: " If we dont get paid our due share,we are gonna switch off the education engine....we damn care about what happens next....

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