"Our universities are dominated by politics where sit-ins, frequent disruptions in academic sessions and illegal demands to provide jobs on quotas to political workers have taken precedence over education." said VC Sindh University.
KARACHI: The vice-chancellor of the University of Sindh, Dr Nazir Mughal, decried the interference by political parties and their student wings, NGOs, as well as various unions of employees, who according to him were using different tactics to blackmail him.
Dr Mughal voiced these concerns during the first meeting of the Public Accounts Committee (PAC) at the committee room of the Sindh Assembly on Monday. "All my pleas and complaints to the higher authorities have gone unheeded," he told the committee members. "Our universities are dominated by politics where sit-ins, frequent disruptions in academic sessions and illegal demands to provide jobs on quotas to political workers have taken precedence over education."
The meeting was chaired by the PAC chairperson, MPA Saleem Raza Jalbani, and was attended by Pakistan Peoples Party MPAs Khairunisa Mughal, Syed Sardar Shah and Lal Chand Ukrani, Muttahida Qaumi Movement's Ponjo Bheel, Pakistan Muslim League - Nawaz MPA Sorath Thebo and Pakistan Muslim League - Functional's Nand Lal.
The MPAs expressed their concern over the poor performance of the University of Sindh, Jamshoro, after officials of the public sector varsity failed to justify the millions of rupees they had spent against the rules.
Officials of the audit department had raised objections to various audit paras from the financial years, 2008-09 to 2009-10, and questioned why the rules were not followed in utilising the budget of the public sector university.
A total of seven paras of the varsity's audit report were discussed and only one para pertaining to the expenditure of Rs0.645 million was verified by the PAC after the university authorities provided the documentary evidence. Meanwhile, the other paras could not be verified as officials failed to prove how they had spent the money.
The PAC's chairperson and other members expressed their displeasure with the irregularities in the audit report and questioned the lack of documentary proof to justify the expenditure. "The irregular expenditures incurred by the university authorities tantamount to corruption, which will not be tolerated," said Jalbani.
VC Mughal, in an attempt to defend himself, repeatedly blamed the employees' association, student wings and teachers union. The PAC chairperson, however, termed them lame excuses and demanded the VC to get rid of the corruption and mismanagement.
Dr Mughal said that there was no corruption and that the Sindh University had shown considerable improvement since he had taken over. He claimed that he had quit his $3 million per annum job in the US and come to Pakistan to serve the education sector. "I even arranged an All-Parties Conference to request political parties to stop meddling with the university's affairs," he said, adding that there had been no tangible results thus far. "All political parties want to run Sindh University's affairs," he said, without quoting the names of the political parties.
Financial constraints
The vice-chancellor revealed that the Sindh University had established 10 campuses in different districts of the province, where enrollment had climbed to 10,000 students. The government had, however, not provided a single penny to run the varsity's affairs, he claimed.
Jalbani also expressed his annoyance over the absence of the provincial finance secretary and other senior officers and directed the PAC secretariat to write to the department to ensure their attendance at every meeting.
Published in The Express Tribune, May 27th, 2014.
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