ISLAMABAD, July 31: The employees of Pakistan Agricultural Research Council (PARC) have expressed serious reservations against the ad hoc management of the Council and its rising financial woes in a letter to President Asif Ali Zardari.

PARC, which is an apex agricultural organisation at the national level operating under the supervision of Ministry of National Food Security and Research, is without a chairman for the last two years and the key technical posts remain vacant. Even the National Agriculture Research Council (NARC) is without a DG for three years.

The employees have said that the overall operations of the PARC are governed by an Executive Committee headed by the chairman.

“It is submitted with great concern that for the last two years there has been neither a regular Chairman nor Member Technical at the Council,” wrote PARC Staff Association president Muhammad Altaf Sher in the letter.

The situation has also placed the officers and the scientists at the PARC and NARC in distress, the letter maintained.

Talking to Dawn, a PhD in the council said that the due to administrative failure of government, a non-scientist, bureaucrat was looking after the affairs of PARC which is also a violation of PARC Ordinance.

“The Council is being run on ad hoc basis with members who also hold other additional responsibilities. This will eventually take its toll on the overall performance of the Council.”

He said that the prime objective pf PARC is to strengthen the agricultural research system of the country.

PARC hosts a large pool of highly qualified manpower of the field including more than 200 PhD scientists.

The other issue highlighted in the letter was declining financial status of the PARC.