LAHORE: The Higher Education Commission (HEC) has rejected BPS (regular teaching staff) faculty’s demand for timescale promotion as available to Tenure Track System (TTS) faculty.

The issue was presented before the 39th meeting of the HEC held in December 2021.

The meeting discussed at length the “Draft policy for appointment & promotion of BPS faculty in public sector higher education institutions (HEIs).”

All the members of the meeting were of the opinion that faculty members recruited on BPS know that they would not be promoted and would progress only through open competition and merit against the advertised positions.

The members said the proposed arrangements should be discouraged otherwise universities would turn into second class colleges. Moreover, no decision should be based on the recommendations of the association.

The members said there was no concept of promotion in higher education institutions.

Earlier, All Pakistan Universities BPS Teachers Association (APUBTA) had been demanding that the HEC provide a service structure for appointment and promotion of BPS faculty.

The APUBTA office-bearers said the HEC divided faculty into two groups and provided a proper service structure for appointment and promotion under TTS and completely ignored the BPS.

They said junior TTS faculty members were moving to senior ranks without advertisement of their posts and without any competition while the BPS faculty members were stuck in the same scale for years due to no promotion policy for them.

They alleged that the TTS faculty was introduced to conduct research but they were given administrative postings in universities and HEC was not taking any action against them.Meanwhile, APUBTA also announced a protest in front of HEC on March 10 for timescale promotion and approval of BPS statutes.

Published in Dawn, March 3rd, 2022