QUA’s non-academic staff warns of strike after Eid

The penalisation of corruption at Quaid-i-Azam University is considered by some of its employees as insufficient. Citing this and a number of other issues including ‘irregularities’ in the varsity affairs, the non-academic staff decided on Friday to go on a strike after Eidul Azha holidays.
The QUA vice chancellor, on the other hand, has termed the protesters as ‘a cluster of black sheep’ in the varsity, who, he said, with their ‘nefarious intentions’ wanted to hamper the work at the varsity ‘without any sold proof’.
Earlier on Thursday, the University’s Employees Welfare Association (EWA) pasted pamphlets reading ‘Enough is enough’ on the walls of the university campus, alleging the varsity administration for giving a free hand to their blue-eyed boys to do corruption.
In the letter, the protesting employees alleged that the university’s registrar during his probationary period had made two promotions.
“The registrar made two out-of-turn promotions in two years,” the letter quoted EWA President Hassan Shah as saying.
He alleged that the children of the varsity high-ups were learning to drive using university vehicles and that some of the QAU ‘top guns’ had been spending varsity funds on the renovation of their houses.
In the letter, the employees’ body also alleged that the incumbent administration had been hiring the favoured few on daily wages. “The administration is relaxing rules to hire their blue-eyed boys at first as daily wage workers only to regularize them later on,” the letter reads.
The employees have demanded the VC should make the record of all employees hired in the last two years public.
The employees also demanded President Asif Ali Zardari should take notice of the “irregularities being done” by the university’s administration.
Talking to Pakistan Today, EWA President Hasan Shah said if university administration failed to heed to our demands, the non-academic employees would go on a strike after Eid holidays.
Talking to Pakistan Today QAU VC Dr Masoom Yasinzai said, “A group of blackmailers was behind in this unscrupulous pamphlet spreading campaign.”
The VC revealed that the QAU administration had in fact fired on Thursday two brothers of EWP President Hasan Shah President in the light of an inquiry report. That sacking, the VC said, might be behind the ongoing ‘smearing’ campaign.
“Hasan Shah is a class-IV official and by blackmailing in the past, he managed to accommodate his 11 close relatives on various posts. And whenever the administration tries to take any disciplinary action against them, Hasan resorts to his blackmailing tactics,” the VC observed.
To a query regarding two promotions made by the registrar, the VC said that promotions were made on merits through the university selection board and were later endorsed by the varsity’s syndicate. He dismissed the impression that the strike could be of any significant impact.