KARACHI, Sept 17: After a deadlock of two months, the vice-chancellor of the University of Karachi held a conciliatory meeting with the varsity employees on Tuesday, it was learnt officially.
The teachers, the non-teaching staff and the students had been at loggerheads with the KU administration on different matters, which took an ugly turn on September 7 when the law enforcing agency personnel baton-charged the teachers and students, including females, and the teaching activities remained suspended for over a week.
On Monday, the Sindh governor, who is also the chancellor of the university, invited a delegation of the varsity teachers’ body and assured it of justice and administrative cordiality on the issues of the students, the teachers and the non-teaching staff on the campus.
A KU press release said that vice-chancellor Dr Zafar Saied Saify held a meeting with the office-bearers of the representative body of the non-teaching employees, the Karachi University Employees Welfare Association, in a cordial atmosphere.
The VC promised to consider the demands of the non-teaching body sympathetically, the university communication added, mentioning that the vice-chancellor had also formed a committee of deans which would look into the problems of the non-teaching staff and furnish its report to the vice-chancellor.
The meeting was held in the afternoon between the vice-chancellor and KUEWA’s secretary and president following a communication from the VC secretariat, said an office-bearer of the association, informing that the vice-chancellor was apprised of the unrest among the staff generated only due to some ill-advised administrative actions.
Secretary of the Association, Jalees A Qazi, said that some of the actions pertaining to deduction from the salaries of the staff, imposition of fines on them, issuance of undue show-cause notices and registration of cases against the non-teaching staff and the teachers and students came under discussion during the meeting and it was agreed that all the actions should be reviewed afresh in the light of the university code.
He said that the VC had promised to withdraw cases against employees and others and it was expected that the orders pertaining to “undue deduction from the salaries” of the staff would also be withdrawn soon.
Mr Jalees said that he had demanded an enquiry against some administrative officials, including the deputy registrars, who were believed to have initiated action in violation of the rules and had been a source of unrest on the campus for months.
A KU source said that similar meetings with other KU bodies including that of the teachers were in the offing.
Meanwhile, the teaching activities remained affected on Tuesday as well, as the teachers boycotted the classes after 12 in the noon. Groups of students also brought out rallies on the campus.
The students’ alliance at the University of Karachi said that it had brought out rallies and staged demonstration on the campus against the proposed recommendations of the Task Force on Higher Education, the ban on students union activities in educational institutions and the deployment of the rangers there.
The enquiry committee constituted by the vice-chancellor to ascertain the circumstances which led to the ugly incident on the campus on September 7 held its meeting to record the statements of all concerned with the incident. As per the requests made by some of the witnesses, the meeting was adjourned till September 21.
A university press release said that the teaching and non-teaching staff performed their duties on Tuesday and there was an improvement in the attendance at different teaching departments of the university.
