LAHORE, May 10: The rule of contract employments in the Lahore College for Women’s University (LCWU) is to end in the coming days as the university decides to advertise key administrative jobs as and when the contracts of incumbent officials expire.
Currently, the posts of the administration director, planning and development director and chief security officer are being held by retired army men, and posts like the faculty and staff development director, career counseling centre director and deputy director and affiliation committee director are being held by officials hired on six-month contracts.
Vice-Chancellor (VC) Prof Dr Sabiha Mansoor told Dawn the planning and development director’s contract had been cancelled. She said several officials appointed on contracts had been regularised through a number of selection boards in the last two months.
She said the university would advertise the remaining jobs as and when the incumbents’ contracts expire.
Senior teachers and officials who have been opposing contract jobs for a long time demand that the university administration advertise all jobs at the earliest as the recruitments on regular basis would take some time.
“The VC could reappoint the officials using his emergency powers if the regular appointment process does not start now,” a senior faculty member said.
The Punjab governor/chancellor has also taken note of frequent use of emergency powers by VCs of public universities in the province and advised them not to use the specific powers vested under the relevant Acts/Ordinances of the universities in any case under the garb of their emergency powers.
He stated that all such cases should be submitted to the chancellor for further action.
The governor had also asked the Punjab Higher Education Department to remain vigilant to the actions taken by the vice-chancellors under their emergency powers in order to check the indiscriminate use of such powers.
Reemployment and ad-hocism has been order of the day in the LCWU, sources say.
They claim that deans of three faculties – Natural Sciences, Engineering and Management Sciences, and Social Sciences –have been serving the third consecutive term of three years each since 2002.
The post of dean faculty of Humanities, Islamic and Oriental Learning has been vacant since 2009. It is learnt that Prof Dr Humala Khalid had served as dean from 2006-09 and she continued serving as dean without formal appointment, though her case is in process.
Upon arrival, the VC replaced her and gave faculty dean office charge to Prof Naushaba Farooq. Sources alleged that the VC had ignored senior faculty members while sending a panel for the appointment of faculty of humanities’ dean.
VC Prof Mansoor said Prof Humala had completed one term and now she had been working without formal appointment orders for the last two years or so. She said that the Higher Education Department had returned the panel early last month with observations that seniority list of the professors in their faculties should be provided along with evaluation sheets prepared on the approved proforma and duly signed and counter signed by candidates and the registrar. She said she had included Prof Khalid’s name on the latest panel sent for the appointment of dean but did not recommend her appointment as dean.
Despite clamor over
Dr Mansoor does not look much bothered about the clamour over appointments, as she continues to strengthen the academic part of the university.
She said the university had established four new institutes and re-structured the faculties. The newly-established faculties are: Institute of Education; Institute of Languages and Culture; Institute of Visual Arts and Design; and Women Institute of Learning and Leadership (WILL). The university has also established the Benazir Bhutto Chair for Peace, Reconciliation and Development with the WILL.
Critics say the LCWU was ranked the 16th last year but it did not show up in this year’s ranking of universities. VC Prof Mansoor said since she was appointed as VC, she did not see any correspondence with regard to ranking of universities.
“When the Higher Education Commission was ready to issue universities’ ranking, I called HEC executive director Dr Suhail Naqvi and told him that the university would forward its data and the commission should not publish incomplete list,” she said.
“Now, the university is applying for the world ranking,” she added.