DADU: Pakistan Peoples Party Sindh president Nisar Ahmed Khuhro has said that federal government must hand over powers and financial resources of the Higher Education Commission to provinces.

Speaking to media persons on the sidelines of an international conference at Sindh University’s Dadu campus here on Thursday, Khuhro said that education was a provincial subject under the 18th Amendment but federal government was holding onto HEC and was not ready to devolve it to provinces.

He said the federal government had raised PSDP by Rs200 billion but did not increase funds for the HEC. “It shows where the central government’s priorities lie,” he said.

On the other hand, he said, the provincial government had increased funds for universities from Rs5bn to Rs6.30bn to improve conditions at universities in Sindh.

He said that federal government was violating provincial autonomy and not giving rights including gas, NFC award and water to the province. Sindh was suffering 20 hours loadshedding every day but Pakistan Tehreek-i-Insaf government was nowhere to be seen to provide relief to people, he said.

Khuhro said that Fawad Chaudhry and Shahbaz Gill were coming to Sindh to find fault with provincial government in order to keep their jobs secure. Students’ fees at SU which had been reduced due to Covid-19 from 2019 to 2021 had been raised. Annual fee had been hiked by “only” Rs3,000, and admission fee had now been increased to Rs21,000, which was inevitable, he said.

Published in Dawn, June 25th, 2021