ISLAMABAD: The All Pakistan Universities Basic Payscale Teachers Association (APUBTA) has announced staging a protest sit-in outside the Higher Education Commission (HEC) headquarters from June 15, if its demands are not met.
The announcement came following a meeting of the core committee of APUBTA.
President APUBTA Dr Samiur Rahman chaired the meeting. The meeting expressed its hope that the new government will live up to its commitment to resolve the issues facing the higher education sector in Pakistan.
The agenda of the meeting was to discuss the plan of the APUBTA as HEC has failed to fulfil its commitments of resolving issues by the mid of May.
The meeting condemned the “non-professional and non-serious approach of the HEC towards the most important issues related to the career of thousands of BPS faculty members in the whole country”.
The recent selection boards at the University of Punjab and Abbottabad University were also discussed which have raised many questions while violating the basic provision and fundamental rights of promotion of in-service senior teachers.
The core committee expressed that the BPS faculty is ready for protest “even in the sweltering heat of the month of June, which shows their commitment to abolishing the HEC’s discriminatory policies forever and implementing the HEC Ordinance in its true spirit”.
On the demand of the BPS faculty, the core committee announced to start protest from 15th June till the approval of the promotion policy as granted in the ordinance.
The strike will include sit-in at Islamabad, classes and exams boycott, and countrywide rallies.
The core committee demanded that the BPS community should start full preparation for the coming protest. It was also decided that a meeting of the focal persons of Islamabad-based universities would be held on May 25, 2022.
The meeting requested Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif to take notice of the discriminatory policies of the HEC and its biased role towards the BPS faculty. The core committee expressed that the HEC policies are destroying higher education in Pakistan.
Copyright Business Recorder, 2022
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