KARACHI, Feb 25: Measures and decisions taken purportedly for academic and administrative improvement at the Institute of Business Administration (IBA) are causing concern among a number of regular employees of the institution as they fail to see any rationale behind the steps.
Teaching and non-teaching staff said that while the administration had reduced salaries of government-cadre regular employees through a process of restructuring of salaries, people appointed for teaching on a contract basis were being paid extraordinary amount.
However, the director of IBA, Dr Javed Ashraf, said that he was trying to discipline the working of the institute. “I have got certain guidelines, endorsed by the board of governors of the institute, regarding appointments of contractual staff and review of the supplementary salary package of teaching staff. Therefore it would be incorrect to term my action unjust.”
The teaching and non-teaching staff of the institute saw problems in Summer programme 2001, collapse of the IBA testing service which had caused a great deal of hassle to students seeking admission to medical colleges, decision of the board of governors, including the decision to increase the fee exorbitantly. The decision had been revoked at a later stage on the directives of the superior authorities.
“Almost every month we get letters from different quarters identifying loopholes in the financial and administrative system of the institute, but the authorities have failed to rectify the situation,” said a teacher on the condition of anonymity. “We don’t want to be named, as some of our colleagues who had merely approached the patron of the institute for justice in their cases had already been told, not in so many words, that action would be initiated against them by the administration.”
Interviews with the staff revealed that experienced IBA regular staff were being transferred or sidelined and appointments were being made on a contract basis on very exorbitant remuneration, which was two to three times more than the pay of the regular staff.
According to an IBA document, some newly inducted teachers are being paid Rs70,000 to Rs90,000 for one or two courses. A couple of contractual staff were getting a gross salary, including professional supplement, of Rs 100,000 or more, claimed a teaching staff.
Talking about new rules for promotion and increase in supplementary package, one regular staffer said that whatever the criteria, it should not be made effective from back dates and must be in line with the policy and practice being observed at other government educational institutions. “Does it make sense that a holder of junior post be paid a gross package which is higher than that of a senior post holder?” he wondered.
Some faculty members were also critical about the appointment of the general manager (administration) and the finance director on higher payments and benefits.
Talking to Dawn, the IBA director, Dr Ashraf admitted that due to restructuring of the compensation package the gross pay scale of a number of academic and administrative staff had been reduced, but added that there was no drastic cut in any case. “We are not in a position to change the gross government salary being paid to any staffer, but with the approval of the board of governors now we have slashed the overall salary of some teachers.”
He said that in view of some anomalies observed in the past, now some of the allowances, including faculty retention and development allowance, and conveyance allowance, had been withdrawn. Compensation structure for some teachers had also been reduced in the light of the outcome of evaluation of teachers by their students, he said, adding that this sort of evaluation was undertaken and considered for the first time under his initiatives, whereas similar evaluation reports compiled before his induction into the IBA were still gathering dust.
When asked why he was critical about teachers’ performance and why he was paying them reduced operational and compensational allowances in the case of self-finance and Summer courses, the director said the purpose of the move was not to undermine the performance of the teachers.
“The reduction in the professional supplement granted to teachers was an attempt to make them more research-oriented and to improve their faculties, as it was believed that they could come up as outstanding performers.”
He said that the present administration had appointed some teachers on a contract basis for a period varying from six months to three years as it believed that permanence sometimes led to slackness.
He said that he was making appointments of people and making them higher payment than what was being paid to UGC cadre staff generally in view of their “market value” under the authority vested in him or the board of governors of the institute through the IBA Act 1994.
However, IBA staff who felt deprived of true benefits and facilities said that “measures were being taken whimsically”. They said that KU rules, which were supposed to be followed by the institute till the time it framed its own rules, allowed the IBA director to make appointments in BPS-16 and above for six months.
The IBA’s BOG chairman had been recorded in the minutes of meetings as saying that until the IBA made its own rules, KU rules might be followed, added an employee.
However, on the issue of statutes, the IBA director said that he had verbal instructions from the BOG chairman on the subject. “Until such time as we have our own code book, which is expected soon, we will use the KU code book as a guide. However, where we feel that some procedure or policies should be different from the KU code book, the IBA board of governors would make its own decision independently,” the IBA director quoted the chairman.
