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No general should be made VC: FAPUASA
LAHORE, Aug 18: No army generals should be appointed vice chancellors
(VCs) in public sector universities in future, said Federation of All Pakistan
Universities Academic Staff Association (FAPUASA) president Dr Mumtaz Ahmad
Salik on Friday.
Speaking at a press conference at the Punjab University
(PU) guesthouse, he said universities were losing dignity due to the wrong
policies of retired army generals.
The press conference was organised in
the wake of two-day executive body FAPUASA's meeting in which the federation's
central leadership and its office bearers from across the country
participated.
Salik said instead of appointing retired army generals and
senior bureaucrats, serving academics should be appointed as VCs as they could
better handle universities' affairs. "Present VCs who are retired officers
should be sent home and replaced with senior professors," he said.
He
said chancellors/governors, provincial governments and the Higher Education
Commission (HEC) were making "undue and unwarranted" interference in public
universities' affairs. He said the HEC was only implementing the Model
University Ordinance to curb public universities' freedom.
Referring to a
directive issued by Punjab governor and chancellor Lt General (r) Khalid Maqbool
in which universities had been directed to discontinue admission quota for
university employees' children, Salik warned if the quota was abolished no
admission would be granted to the children of army men on the quota system. "Why
they (army men) enjoy quota in various jobs?" he asked.
The FAPUASA
president said, "The government has appointed an intermediate retired brigadier
as VC of Balochistan University who has ruined the academic and administrative
affairs of the university. Balochistan University teachers are being threatened
and served with show cause notices for raising voice against the
VC."
Salik said the methodology that the HEC had adopted was nowhere in
the world. He said the commission was dictating universities which was against
the Constitution. He said the commission threatened, pressured and in the end
wrote to the chancellor to get imposed its decisions.
He said the
National Testing Service (NTS) had opened a private company which was only
working to make money. "The admission should be based on merit alone and not on
the entry test," he added.
He said the HEC had wasted away a 'huge' sum
of money in the name of funding universities and demanded that the chief justice
take suo moto notice of the situation. "HEC officials are drawing good salaries
and enjoying other perks and privileges," he said, adding that if the money had
been spent on universities the results had been better.
Salik said
university teachers had no opportunities for PhD studies and faced problems in
upgrading their posts. He said due to the HEC's cold response the FAPUASA had
decided to launched a countrywide protest campaign against the
commission.
He said universities' teachers would hold a countrywide
protest on September 5 and observe a black day and from onward September 12 they
would observe two-hour strike every Wednesday. The protest campaign will
continue till demands are accepted, he added. Daily times
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| Education News | | Updated: 22 May, 2012 |
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