ISLAMABAD: The Supreme Court noted that many of the public sector universities are being run in contravention of their laws on the personal whim of those placed in charge thereof.

A three-judge bench, headed by Chief Justice Qazi Faez Isa, on Friday, released a written order of July 11, 2024 proceeding regarding the vacancies of vice-chancellors and the registrars in public universities.

The order said: “Considerable amount from the public exchequer is spent on public sector universities. These universities must abide by their respective laws. Unfortunately, we note that many are being run in contravention of their laws on the personal whim of those placed in charge thereof.”

“These transgressions adversely affect academics, the reputation and standing of Pakistani universities and also undermine the degrees awarded by them,” it added.

The order said that the public sector universities must comply with their respective laws, and if those in charge of them are disregarding the same for no justifiable reason, then they must demonstrate that they are still competent to hold their respective positions.

It observed that the laws governing these universities require that the meetings of syndicates, senates, boards of governors and boards of trustees, as applicable, must be periodically held. Universities must not leave vacant important positions of vice-chancellors, presidents, vice-presidents, registrars, heads of faculties and departments, controller of examination and director finance as in doing so they contravene the applicable laws. This state of affairs, whereby, the law is disregarded cannot be allowed to continue.

The order further noted that nearly all the universities are failing to abide by the Higher Education Commission (HEC)’s prescribed guidelines regarding ratio of academic to non-academic staff i.e. 1:1.5, as the non-academic staff far exceeds the said ratio.

This appears to be one of the reasons for the financial problems being faced by the universities. The Federation, provinces and the Islamabad Capital Territory to submit whether directions have been issued to ensure that the universities shall restrict/stop further employment of nonacademic staff.

All Public Universities BPS Teachers Association (Association), which represents about 50,000 teachers working in public universities, in April this year filed a public interest petition.

Through this petition they have drawn the attention of the apex court to ensure that federal laws, provincial laws and statutes of public sector universities are implemented.

They submitted that out of the 147 public sector universities about 60 are functioning without vice chancellors; while the tenured positions in public sector universities are not filled-in; and the decision making bodies of the public sector universities, including their boards of governors, syndicates, senates and academic councils do not hold meetings with the frequency as stipulated in the law or their respective statutes, consequently, public sector universities are under performing and impinges on their academic freedom.

Their stance is that public sector universities, as envisaged in the law, were supposed to be autonomous but when the said positions are not filled-in and meetings do not take place it facilitates outside interference including by the federal and provincial governments.

They also submitted that Article 4 of the Constitution stipulates that citizens must be treated in accordance with the law, which is their inalienable right, and that when public sector universities, which are dependent on their funding on taxpayers’ money, are not governed in accordance with the law and their respective statutes, the citizens’ inalienable right is violated.

They said that Article 25 of the Constitution requires that all citizens be treated equally; however, when some public sector universities are functioning in accordance with law and others are not with regard to the latter then the citizens are not treated equally. They also contended that the Constitution was amended and Article 25A was inserted, therein, in the year 2010, and though the said provision attends to children up to the age of 16 years it shows the importance attached by Parliament to education.

Copyright Business Recorder, 2024