PESHAWAR: The long absence of various section heads in the administration of Islamia College University (ICU), Peshawar, has been affecting its administrative and planning matters, according to sources.

The key posts at any university’s administration after the vice-chancellor include that of the registrar, treasurer, provost and director planning and development, the sources said, adding that ‘unfortunately none of them are currently working in the ICU’.

They said that the university had been literally running on ad hoc basis in terms of administration and in such a situation its teachers and students were the ultimate sufferers.

Acting ICU VC says sanctioned posts to be filled soon

The sources said that registrar of the university should be a senior person knowing all rules and regulations because he would represent the university. They said that instead of appointing a senior person a junior lecturer had been working on the post for the last one year as the university failed to appoint a permanent registrar.

Section 13 of the Khyber Pakhtunkhwa Universities Act, 2012, states; “There shall be a registrar of the university who shall be the principal administrative officer of the university”. Sub-section 4 of Section 13 further states that ‘the registrar shall be a full-time officer of the university---”.

The sources said that instead of appointing a permanent treasurer the university administration had hired a consultant to perform duties of the treasurer.

Under the law, the treasurer is responsible to manage the assets, liabilities, receipts, expenditure, funds and investments of the university. The treasurer is also responsible for preparing the annual and revised budget estimates of the university, and to present them to the syndicate or a committee for approval and incorporation in the budget to the presented to the senate.

“The university cannot hire a consultant for running its administrative affairs,” a senior official at ICU told Dawn. He said that consultants could be hired for capacity building, training and helping in big projects.

Similarly, director planning and development of the university has gone on a six months leave about a month ago.

The sources said that in the absence of senior officials, some strange decisions had been taken recently by the university administration. For instance, they said, the university administration had advertised different positions in 2014, 2015 and 2016. However, the selection board was held in May this year to fill the vacant positions advertised only in 2016 while names of the recommended candidates would be put up for the syndicate’s approval. The vacant positions advertised in 2014 and 2015 are yet to filled, they said.

They said that the authorities at the helm of affairs had own interest in the appointments on posts advertised in 2016. Similarly, the sources said, a serious issue had been running between the ICU and Higher Education Commission over the Tenure Track Appointments. The HEC is responsible to pay salaries to the teachers appointed under TTA, they said. However, it has not released salaries to the faculty members of ICU for the last one year due to its poor correspondence with the HEC due to absence of the senior officials, the sources said.

The sources said that since the HEC had not released funds the university administration had been paying to faculty members around 33 per cent of their total salary from own resources.

Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif and Federal Minister for Planning and Development Ihsan Iqbal had announced Rs1 billion and Rs0.7 billion, respectively, for ICU about seven months ago. However, the sources said that the P&D section of the university had so far failed to prepare projects for utilising the pledged funds which could lapse.

When contacted, acting vice-chancellor of ICU Prof Naushad Khan told Dawn that the sanctioned posts mentioned in the university budget would be filled soon.

The acting VC, who took over on June 25 after the retirement of VC Ajmal Khan, claimed that the HEC had released funds to the university meant for the salaries of faculty members appointed under TTA. “Payment to them (teachers) would start soon,” he claimed.

Prof Naushad said that the Office of Research, Innovation and Commercialisation, a cell working in ICU, has initiated work on the preparation of projects to utilise the funds pledged by the prime minister and federal minister as soon as possible.

Published in Dawn, July 11th, 2016