Islamabad : Recently the Chairman of the Senate, Sadiq Sanjrani, took action on the matter of university teachers protesting outside the Higher Education Commission (HEC) and referred it to the standing committee.
In the meeting of the Senate, Senator Saadia Abbasi had lamented the lack of concrete action despite previous directives to the HEC regarding the matter from the Senate and National Assembly Standing Committees.
In response to these developments, a notification of a committee from the HEC was found circulating on social media. The date of the notification of the committee is August 24,2023 but its first meeting has been held.
The TOR of the committee shows that it has to restart the whole process of drafting a new policy. This apparently seems to deceive the Senate Standing Committee,which will discuss the issue in its coming meeting.
Earlier, the issue has already discussed in the meeting of the Senate Standing Committee on August 22, 2022. In that meeting, Chairman HEC had told the standing committee that the Academic Committee of the Commission has decided to constitute a sub-committee to review the existing draft policy and the final recommendations of the sub-committee will be placed before the Academic Committee of the Commission and subsequent to the Commission for consideration. Chairman HEC was directed to submit report to the Senate Standing Committee.
The issue came on the agenda of National Assembly Standing Committee on January 3, 2023. Chairman of the National Assembly Standing committee directed that the matter had already consumed a considerable amount of time and management of the HEC should take all possible measures to get finalized the due process before next meeting. The next meeting of the standing committee took place on February 3, 2023. In this meeting, Chairman HEC was directed to finalize the process in consultation with APUBTA and FAPUASA and submit its report.
Despite the directives of the standing committees, no concrete step was taken by Chairman HEC. On May 17, 2023, Chairman of the Special Committee of the National Assembly directed Chairman HEC for submission of the compliance report which was not submitted.
In meeting of the Special Committee on July 26-07-23, HEC official briefed the committee that rules have been drafted for settlement of the issue. Proposed draft was placed before the National assembly special committee. Committee directed to notify the same without dely but Chairman HEC did not take any step forward.
This is very surprising that on November 8, 2023, a notification of the constitution of a new committee has been surfaced. The TOR of the committee shows that the whole process of drafting a policy will restart. It is also very surprising that first meeting of the committee has been called after 75 days of the notification of the committee. Another surprising aspect of the matter is that on October 20,2023, HEC released minutes of its meeting with FAPUASA and in this meeting HEC has committed that they are going to put the agreed draft for approrval of the commission.
This whole story shows that HEC staff is either incompetent, confused or they are not serious to solve this issue.
APUBTA believes that Chairman HEC is not serious in solving the issue and by constituting this new Committee Chairman HEC is deceiving the standing committee which will discuss the case in its coming meeting.