LAHORE: Federation of All Pakistan Universities Academic Staff Association (FAPUASA) expressed serious concern over the non-payment of salaries to Balochistan University teachers and demanded the government of Pakistan resolve the issues facing higher education on a priority basis.

FAPUASA Central President Dr Amjad Magsi has expressed serious concerns over the start of a hunger strike camp by the teachers of Balochistan University as a result of non-payment of salaries. He said that today universities across the country are going through a severe crisis period and the Higher Education Commission is completely unable to solve the problems of these universities.

FAPUASA President added that HEC’s budget is frozen at 65 billion and Chairman HEC has started the construction of a new HEC Secretariat with a huge budget of billions of rupees. He said that the main function of HEC is to address the problems facing higher education in the country and solve the problems of the university, but today BPS teachers are protesting for their basic right of service structure while the salaries of TTS teachers are not being increased since few years and the entire responsibility of these chronic issues rests on the authority of the HEC.

The General Secretary of FAPUASA Dr. Uzair Ahmad said that the universities of Khyber Pakhtunkhwa are also suffering from severe economic and administrative problems like Balochistan and the time is not far when the teachers of Khyber Pakhtunkhwa will also be forced to set up hunger strike camps outside their respective universities. He further said that the HEC Chairman, instead of fulfilling the promises made to the FAPUASA officials and solving the problems of the teachers, they are spending the development budget of higher education for the construction of the new secretariat.

FAPUASA said that when the responsibility of higher education is gradually being transferred to the provincial governments instead of the federal government, it is incomprehensible for the HEC chairman to dedicate a large part of the construction budget to the central secretariat.

The central president Dr Amjad Magsi demanded the provincial governments to establish provincial higher education commissions and give them administrative and financial autonomy to solve the problems of universities in their provinces on a priority basis.

Copyright Business Recorder, 2024