KARACHI: Sindh Minister for Universities and Boards Ismail Rahu has expressed concerns over cuts in grants to public sector universities in the federal budget.

He said that decreasing the budget of public universities from Rs65 billion to Rs30bn would completely stop research education. Hence, it will lead to the increase in difficulties of students and teachers, he added.

The reduction of budget will increase the fees of poor students and their education will be greatly affected, he said, adding that budget cuts would lead to an economic crisis in the universities and the federal government should reconsider the decision.

While criticising the previous government, the minister said that Imran Khan’s government destroyed the education system of the country, the budget of the universities was cut and all other universities had been economically pushed into crisis.

He said that in the last four years, the federal government had not increased the grants to the universities, but had reduced them. Public sector universities are already burdened by rising salaries, pensions and development budgets. Also, the expenditure on inflation, unemployment, pensions, salaries, development projects has increased significantly in the last four years, he added.

He said Sindh’s universities had been facing a financial crisis for the past four years.

Instead of increasing the budget, the budget had been reduced despite the fact that in 2017-18 the number of universities was increased to 178 and now it reached 240, he said, adding that on the whole, public sector universities were the only recourse for poor students pursuing higher education.

Published in Dawn, May 28th, 2022