KARACHI: Gearing up for a bigger agitation against the decision of Higher Education Commission (HEC) to reduce annual grants of universities, teachers have organised a protest walk on Karachi University (KU) campus on Thursday at 2pm.

The protest would follow a meeting of the Karachi University Teachers’ Society (Kuts) and the Federation of All Pakistan Universities Academic Staff Association (Fapuasa) Sindh chapter.

“The HEC is saying that it’s only a 10 per cent cut in the annual grant. But, actually it comes to around 20pc if you take into account rupee devaluation, inflation and other factors,” said Ghufran Alam representing Kuts, describing the financial crisis universities were facing as the worst in their history.

Responding to a question, he explained that the university received around Rs2 billion as annual grant from the HEC last year and the 10pc cut would translate into a reduction of almost Rs210m.

“This would aggravate the financial crisis universities are already experiencing.

In Sindh, we haven’t received any financial assistance this year from the provincial government, which provided Rs477m last year,” he said, adding that the HEC funds met only half of KU’s needs (estimated to be between Rs5 and Rs7bn) and the university generated the rest from its various academic programmes.

Regretting “Sindh government’s attitude”, he said that there had been no intimation on this subject from the provincial government so far despite meetings.

“As a public sector university, we can only raise student fees to a certain limit and can’t opt for commercial activities,” Mr Alam said.

Asked about how the financial crisis has affected research activities at KU, he said: “In a situation where universities are unable to pay their staffers, how could they carry out research?

Second, the HEC has stopped all kinds of assistance meant to encourage research.”

Teachers would also hold a press briefing later in the day.

Published in Dawn, September 12th, 2019