LAHORE: Tuesday’s transfer of the Higher Education Department (HED) secretary is the 18th change of its head during the three-year rule of the Pakistan Tehreek-i-Insaff in the Centre and Punjab.

Posted as HED Secretary in February last, Nadeem Mahbub has now been assigned duty in the Prime Minister Office as additional secretary. His replacement has not been announced yet.

Mr Mahbub had replaced Irum Bukhari as HED head some five months ago after her post was upgraded. Whereas Ms Bujhari had replaced special secretary Muhammad Naeem Ghaus who was given the additional charge of the office.

Prior to that, Mr Ghaus had replaced Zulfiqar Ahmad Ghuman who was transferred and appointed as the Lahore commissioner on Aug 25 last.

The higher education secretaries who worked for a brief period include Raheel Siddique, Irum Bukhari, Sarah Saeed, Khalid Saleem, Imran Sikandar Baloch, Sarah Aslam, Sajid Zaffar Dall, Capt retired Muhammad Mahmood (just one day), Momin Agha (less than two months) and Shaukat Ali.

Sources said the ad hoc approach was hurting the HED badly. They said secretary had a major role in devising, implementing and regulating the higher education sector.

They said the BS honours programme in colleges across the province had almost been neglected. They said there were also several other issues as the government was working on a uniform act for all the universities in the province.

Published in Dawn, July 28th, 2021