KARACHI: Ignoring university’s financial troubles, members of Karachi University (KU) syndicate have recently approved a proposal to set up a medical and dental college on the campus, it emerged on Thursday.

The decision was taken at a meeting chaired by KU Vice Chancellor Prof Khalid M. Iraqi at the VC Secretariat.

Sources said the proposal for setting up a medical and dental college on the campus wasn’t new. It had been floated years ago but couldn’t be materialised.

“In fact, the KU syndicate had approved a similar proposal in 2014. It couldn’t see light of the day because the proposal of a medical college and a hospital was approved without a feasibility report,” shared a senior KU teacher, adding that the then syndicate members later came to know that the proposed plan wasn’t backed up by a reliable donor agency, forcing them to withdraw the proposal.

Sources regretted that the university almost a decade later had represented the proposal, again without a feasibility report.

A press release issued by the university says, “The syndicate meeting in principle approved the proposal of establishing KU’s medical and dental college. The members recommended submitting a detailed feasibility report along with the objective analysis to the syndicate members for further deliberation.

“The proposal has been approved so that the University of Karachi could invite interested parties to the medical and dental college project.”

It might be recalled that the university has been seeing protests over non-payment of dues, remunerations and delayed salaries for quite some time, seriously affecting its academic activities.

Notes of dissent

The meeting saw three notes of dissent, one of which pertained to university administration’s decisions to submit the budget documents to the Higher Education Commission, without getting them first approved by the university senate and syndicate.

The members also raised concern over the case of Dr Imran Hashmi who was deprived of his due status as professor for several years.

Sources said the syndicate approved without discussion more than 250 actions taken by the vice chancellor on behalf of the syndicate. These actions pertained to hosts of administrative decisions including 1,781 teaching appointments.

The members approved the minutes of the Finance and Planning Commission meeting dated December 29, 2023, and proposed to revise the budget for 2024-25 at the earliest.

It also approved the appointments of the chairperson and director(s) in various departments and institutes. The members agreed to award BPS-19 to assistant professor (Temporary) to the in-service lecturers BPS-18 based on PhD qualification on the availability of the budgeted posts in the concerned departments.

“The syndicate asked the KU Registrar Professor Dr Abdul Waheed to check the previous syndicate resolution on the up-gradation of various non-teaching posts and share his report with the members in the next meeting.”

“It also approved the suggestion of the Advanced Studies and Research Board to award the MPhil degree to (late) Syed Tanveer Hayder after his demise based on external reports,” says a press release.

Published in Dawn, June 14th, 2024