KARACHI, Oct 17: Despite a passage of over two months, there seems no end to the ongoing process of admission to first-year classes in the city government colleges.
According to sources in colleges and the admission committee of the city government, teaching at many of the colleges has commenced, but a considerable number of students and their parents are still awaiting clearance of their cases. About 1,500 claims are still to be set aside by the centralized admission committee (CAP), which is working at the PECHS College for Women, added one source.
The routine release of the placement lists would not be possible further, as the two claim centres set up at the National College and the Khatoon-i-Pakistan College would cease to function from Oct 18. All the left-over cases would now be dealt with directly by the CAP and as such parents or students would now have to visit the committee at the PECHS College.
One of the admission workers said that an extraordinary number of claims forms were received this year. About 1,000 claims forms were received in the first three days after the issuance of the three placement lists.
Most of the claimants had contested the working by computers and maintained that placements were not made according to the applications. The malfunctioning of computers could be assessed by the fact that even students with high marks were not able to get admissions to colleges for which they had applied, and were placed in some far-flung or newly-established colleges.
On the other hand, the members of the admission committee, who had been hired from colleges against an honorarium of Rs500 per day, attributed the problems to the students, who according to them, failed to fill the forms as per given directives and computers requirements.
The first placement list of home economics and general science faculties was released on Sept 11, while the last list — humanities (boys) group — was released on Oct 5.
As per the CAP practice, students of every group were given seven days to finalize their admissions. The admission process had started on Aug 13 with the sale of forms, while teaching was supposed to commence in the third week of Sept, as announced by the authorities in the beginning of the process.
However, the date for enrolments, which was extended to Oct 15, has also expired, while a good number of students are yet to finalize their admissions, following which their enrolments would be sent to the Board of Intermediate Education.
District Officer Education (colleges) Prof Mujeeb Feroze, told Dawn that the Board would be asked to extend the date for enrolment once again to Nov 15 to accommodate the left- over students.
He said the pace of admission works was affected due to teachers’ involvement in election duties, but now a maximum number of cases were being cleared. “Only on Wednesday we cleared 200 cases and placed the eligible applicants at different colleges.”
He said the situation had aggravated only because some of the students or their parents were not satisfied with the decision of the admission committee and they continued to approach it for admission to their colleges of choice. However, the number of genuine and deserving cases had reduced considerably and the admission cell would finally be closed at the PECHS College on Oct 21, he added.
Parents maintained that admission staff at the claim centres and admission cell were not available in adequate number, while those who were authorized to take decisions were also not present in time. “It is due to the shortcoming of the committee members that we have to visit the cell again and again,” said a number of students.
