LAHORE: The faculty and other staff of the Women University, Multan (WUM), have been working without salary for the last two months due to the office of vice-chancellor lying vacant for the last two years.

Earlier, BZU vice chancellor Tahir Amin was given the additional charge of the university for one and a half month and later Dr Talat Afza, VC of the Government Sadiq College University, Bahawalpur, was appointed as interim VC. She remained additional VC for more than 20 months and did not even call a single meeting of the Syndicate to approve its budget for 2018.

She was removed from the additional post by the Lahore High Court, Multan bench, on Jan 25, 2019 for remaining more than six months on additional post.

The situation turned worse for the 600 employees of the WUM as their salary was stopped because of the interim VC did not sign minutes of the Syndicate meeting held under her on Jan 21. There are 500 permanent and 100 on-deputation employees of the university who are working without salary for the last two months or so.

The employees last week held a protest in and outside the university demanding their salaries. They also demanded posting of a permanent VC.

They said that without a permanent VC, the seat of treasurer and controller were also lying vacant for the last two years and they could not further conduct examinations.

They said the petrol pump administration had stopped petrol and diesel sale to university buses.

They said one of the employees of the university passed away and his heirs could not even receive salary.

WUM registrar Samina Saleem told Dawn that syndicate had not approved the budget and it resulted in stoppage of salaries of all the employees.

She said that the syndicate meeting was held on Feb 21, 2019 and the additional VC was removed from the post on Feb 25 and she could not sign the budget approved in the last meeting.She said that the interim VC was given charge of the post for six months but she continued on the verbal orders of the higher education department for around 21 months.

Miss Saleem said that she had written to the chancellor and higher education department time and again but no one was ready to solve the problem.

She said as the post of the VC was advertised, it would take several months to complete the process She said the government should appoint any additional VC to run the daily business.

The higher education department had advertised the posts of VCs of 14 universities last week, including the Women University, Multan.

Published in Dawn, March 2nd, 2019