REGARDLESS of the definition of visiting faculty, the experience suggests that a visiting faculty member is a teacher who is supposed to keep on visiting the finance department of the university to get the invoice for the previous semester cleared.

However, things are bad in the case of the Federal Urdu University, Islamabad (FUUI). On every visit to the finance department, the visiting faculty is told that the invoice is not ready and the university administration, not the finance department, was responsible for this delay.

I submitted two invoices in the last week of July against two courses taught at FUUI in the spring 2018 semester that ended in July 2018. I repeatedly visited the finance office to get my arrears cleared and finally one cheque was given to me in the second week of September. I was told that the other cheque would also be cleared soon. I visited the finance office in the last week of September and I was told that the cheque was under audit and it would take two more days.

I visited the finance office again in the first week of October. I was told some sort of approval from the university was required.

The finance officer said that I must count myself lucky that I had at least one cheque cleared and I should be thankful to him as some visiting faculty members had invoice pending for over two years.

The question is: if the university does not have appropriate funds, why is it hiring visiting faculty?

Ali Qaswar

Islamabad

Published in Dawn, November 12th, 2018