Sindh Universities Act 2013: Varsities’ body presses for act changes

Academic activities in public sector universities to be suspended on February 17.

HYDERABAD: Striving to seek a curtailment of the government's influence on public sector universities in Sindh, varsity teachers have decided to up the ante.

After three months of unsuccessful lobbying efforts with the Sindh government to win back the administrative autonomy of higher education institutions, the academics will now take recourse to protests and strikes.

On the call of the Federation of All Pakistan Universities Academic Staff Association (FAPUASA), all academic activities in Sindh's public sector universities will be suspended on February 17. In other provinces, a one-hour token strike will also be observed.

"The FAPUASA has been forced by the attitude of the Sindh Government to resort to such extreme measures," the association's provincial general secretary Prof Ahsan Memon rationalised at a press conference on Sunday.

The Sindh Assembly amended the Sindh Universities Act 1972 in August last year with the new Sindh Universities Laws (Amendment) Act 2013. The act, which transferred authority over the universities from the governor to the provincial government, left most of the teachers' concerns unresolved.

"While one of our core demands - about making the elected provincial government, instead of the governor, an authority over the varsities - was accepted, the new act took away whatever autonomy the universities had before its passage," Memon argued.

The teachers' representatives have been trying to get another amendment passed. According to Memon, they have held meetings with law minister Sikandar Mandhro and other government functionaries, all of whom assured them that the law will be amended on the basis of their recommendations. "The law minister assured us at a meeting in September of last year that the bill will be tabled in the next assembly session but they haven't done so in more than three months."

Political move?

Under the act, universities were shorn of their powers to appoint the registrar, controller examinations, bursar, chief accountant and resident auditor. The teachers interpreted the move as being aimed at politicising appointments against these posts.

"We all have seen what political appointments have done to government education in schools and colleges," said Sindh Universities Teachers Association (SUTA) president Dr Azhar Ali Shah. "The same will happen to public sector universities if the government started making these appointments."

FAPUASA wants the appointing authority for these posts to be given to a syndicate - a representative body in each university. Their other main demand concerns the appointment of the vice-chancellor and giving priority to the three most senior professors of a university for the post.

Published in The Express Tribune, February 10^th, 2014.