ISLAMABAD: The Overseas Pakistanis Foundation (OPF) has sanctioned special allowance for the principal of its girls college at F-8 for looking after the affairs of another college, ignoring the other staff members.

Under the alleged discriminatory policy approved by the board of governors (BoG) of the OPF, the principal of the OPF Girls College F-8, Darakhshan Waqas, gets additional financial allowance for looking after the affairs of the OPF College at F-11.

In its meeting held on November 13, 2020, the BoG approved the additional pay of Rs60,000 for the principal, according to documents available with Dawn.

Under the law, the OPF should appoint a separate principal and staff for all its institutions to avoid any conflict of interest or discrimination. But the OPF management has been running the F-11 College with principal and teachers and other staff of its F-8 college. But except the principal, no staffer is being paid for the additional work.

No other staff of F-8 college given additional amount for working in institution in F-11

Despite repeated attempts for comments, Principal Darakhshan Waqas neither attended calls nor responded to text messages.

However, OPF Director General Education Mahesh Kumar said the post of the principal required monetary allocations but currently OPF was facing financial constraints owing to the Covid-19 pandemic. He said as soon as the financial position of OPF improved, hiring will be made for the new campus.

About the dual payment to the principal, Mr Kumar said when the F-11 campus was established the board of the OPF decided to wait for some time before hiring a new principal as the new project may not be successful.

“So the board decided to give dual charge to the principal F-8 College with extra allowance until the appointment of the new principal,” he added.

When asked why the other employees also serving at both the institutions were not paid additional salary, Mr Kumar said teachers were paid as per their workload.

“For example, if a teacher of F-8 College is supposed to deliver 25 lecturers a week she will deliver 25 lecturers in both the colleges, so there is no extra burden on them,” he said.

Published in Dawn, November 7th, 2021