GUJRAT: The University of Gujrat (UoG) has withdrawn its earlier decision of withdrawing transport facility for the students following a sharp decline in the number of applicants for the admission to the Fall 2019 session.

The UoG has been providing pick-and-drop facility to students, mostly belonging to Gujrat and its neighbouring districts -- Sialkot, Gujranwala, Mandi Bahauddin, Jhelum and Bhimbher (Azad Jammu and Kashmir) -- for the last 13 years. The varsity would charge Rs6,500 from each student as transport fee whether he/she availed the facility or not.

However, acting Vice Chancellor Prof Dr Faheem Malik who has been replaced by a regular VC last week, had announced to change the policy by withdrawing the transport facility for the new students.

The decision to review the acting VC’s policy was announced by the newly-appointed VC Prof Dr Shabbar Atiq, who assumed the charge on July 24, in a meeting with the senior academic and administrative staff on Friday the last.

Dr Atiq also announced extension in the deadline for online submission of application forms till August 20.

UoG registrar Dr Tahir Aqeel had earlier told Dawn that the transport facility had been withdrawn following unprecedented cuts in the public sector universities budgets by the Higher Education Commission (HEC).

However, the varsity sources said the acting VC had withdrawn the transport facility from students after a swindler deprived the varsity of Rs0.6 million in a scam a few months ago.

The students, parents, varsity staff and civil society had lodged a strong protest against the withdrawal of the transport facility, demanding its restoration.

But, the varsity administration had to review the decision finally after it received a poor response to the admission advertisement, mainly because of withdrawal of the transport facility.

Last year, the UoG had received some 27,000 applications for admission out of which some 5,500 were accepted, but for the fall 2019 admissions the varsity received just around 8,000 applications.

The Hafiz Hayat Campus of the UoG is located some 14 kilometers away from Gujrat city and after withdrawal of transport facility it had became problematic for the students, especially women, to commute to and from the varsity on local buses. For the students belonging to neighboring districts the problem had become more acute.

The students, faculty and administrative staff have taken a sigh of relief after the UoG administration’s decision to restore the transport facility, demanding a probe into the conduct of the former acting VC.

Published in Dawn, July 29th, 2019