LAHORE: The Federation of All Pakistani Universities Academic Staff Association (FAPUASA) Punjab chapter, PUASA and GCU ASA delegation called on Higher Education Commission (HEC) Chairman Dr Tariq Banuri in Islamabad on Monday.

The delegation, including Dr Ahtisham Ali, Dr Amjad Abbas Magsi, Dr Muhammad Islam and Dr Hafiz Muhammad Tahir, discussed the need for immediate steps to improve the quality of higher education in the country as well as to bring in uniformity of standards for faculty promotions across the country.

They also emphasised on the redress of service/promotion and remuneration related issues of faculty working in both basic pay scale (BPS) and tenure track system (TTS) streams.

The delegation said that job satisfaction among faculty members could lead to the growth of the higher education institutes and improvement in teaching and research outputs. They presented the draft of recommendations/amendments about the proposed promotion policy for the BPS faculty, which were prepared by Dr. Muhammad Islam, Convener Service Structure Working Group, PUASA.

During the discussion, Mr Banuri agreed to the salient features of the draft, including the request of including a service structure path for non-PhD faculty members.

The possibility and need of making ‘teaching’ an important component of faculty evaluation for promotion and rewards/incentives were analysed and agreed upon.

Similarly, the start of TTS appointment from the date of departmental technical review committee (DTRC) was also discussed and the chairman ensured the delegates to play his role in bringing about more clarity to the TTS statutes e.g. endorsement in addition the issue of post-PhD experience in faculty appointments was also discussed in detail.

Published in Dawn, January 25th, 2022