PESHAWAR: The establishment department has turned down a summary of the higher education department seeking extension in the tenure of Islamia College University Peshawar’s vice-chancellor for three more years.

The three-year term of VC Prof Habib Ahmad will end in July.

Sources in the HED told Dawn that the department had formally proposed the three-year extension in the ICU VC’s term on the directives of Chief Minister Mahmood Khan.

Establishment dept rejects summary insisting performance indicators don’t exist

They said under the rules, the summary was to reach the governor and ICU Chancellor Shah Farman after its approval by the establishment department and chief minister.

The sources said the establishment department rejected the summary insisting the HED hadn’t formulated the mandatory key performance indicators to assess the efficiency of Prof Habib as VC for term extension.

They said the law allowed extension in the services of a public sector university’s VC but that was linked with the assessment of his or her performance by KPIs.

Section 12(6) of the Khyber Pakhtunkhwa Universities Act 2013 states, “the tenure of three years may be extended once for another such term on the basis of performance to be evaluated by Government against the key performance indicators to be set up by Government.”

Though the section was incorporated into the law governing universities in 2016, the HED has yet to make KPIs to evaluate the VC’s performance on the completion of three years tenure.

The officials said KPIs helped determine whether the VC reserved service extension or not.

They said the establishment department rejecting the ICU VC’s term extension proposal asked the HED to formulate KPIs before evaluating the performance of the VC in question under them.

The officials claimed that since Prof Habib Ahmad belonged to the chief minister’s native town of Swat, the latter had pushed for the former’s service extension.

Section 12(3) of the Act declares, “the process of selection of a new Vice-Chancellor shall be initiated six months prior to the expiration of the existing term of the incumbent.”

The sources claimed that the tenure of the VCs of the province’s six public sector universities, including Islamia College University Peshawar, Gomal University DI Khan, Hazara University Mansehra, Swabi Women University, Khushal Khan Khattak University Karak and Abbottabad University for Science and Technology, would expire in July.

They said the HED, however, advertised VC vacancies for the universities other than ICU in March clearly suggesting the extension of the ICU VC’s term.

The sources said after the summary’s rejection, the HED had accelerated efforts to formulate KPIs to ensure the extension of the ICU VC’s term.

A senior official of the HED told Dawn that the law had a provision about KPIs for the VC service extension but they hadn’t been formulated yet.

He, however, said the department recently made KPIs and sent them to the law department for vetting.

Published in Dawn, May 11th, 2019