Forget PhD, Master’s enough to land Sindhi lectureship at KU

Sidelining the more competent and eligible candidates, the University of Karachi (KU) is set to ‘give’ two of the coveted lecturers’ posts at its Sindhi Department to the faculty’s blue-eyed candidates holding only Master’s degrees, Pakistan Today has learnt.
Ignoring other higher qualified candidates and flouting all rules and regulations, the varsity management has sidelined the merit criteria and selected two contenders holding only Master’s degrees among a list of candidates having MPhil degrees and doing their PhDs.
Well-placed sources privy to the development told Pakistan Today that in 2008, the KU Sindhi Department had advertised for two vacant positions of lecturers.
More than 40 candidates had applied for the coveted jobs, but the selection process was arbitrarily delayed by the alleged involvement of KU’s Shah Abdul Latif Chair Chairman Prof Saleem Memon and his team.
In 2010, the candidates were short-listed after a written test and only eight candidates were selected for a final interview that finally took place at the varsity campus on January 23.
The candidates called for the interview included renowned writer Ayaz Jani Channa, Aziz Khaskheli, Anwar Sagar Kandhro, Sajid Ahmed Soomro, Jamila Tabbasum, Sajida Parveen and Shazia Pitafi.
Interestingly, Parveen and Pitafi are the only candidates who hold a Master’s degree in Sindhi, while all the remaining candidates hold MPhil degrees or are enrolled in PhDs programmes.
However, the master’s degree holders were the two allegedly selected for the job by the subject specialists, Dr Noor Afroze Khwaja and Qazi Khadim, of the Selection Committee.
Under the rules and regulations framed by the KU itself, the Selection Committee cannot include any interviewer, who has any relations with the jobseekers. Moreover, the committee should not have any relatives or colleagues on the board and merit should be the only criteria for the selection process.
Whereas, in this case, Parveen is a close relative of a senior teacher at the Sindhi Department, Dr Ghafoor Memon – against whom the department’s students have protested time and again over alleged nepotism and favouritism culture.
Meanwhile, Pitafi has been working as a lecturer at the University of Sindh under the direct supervision of selection committee member, Dr Khwaja.
The sources also disclosed that Pitafi and Dr Khawaja had arrived for the final interview at the KU campus from Hyderabad in a private car together.
The sources alleged that the selection process has been rigged by the chairman of the KU’s Shah Abdul Latif Chair as he wants to have a strong control over a few of the varsity’s departments, particularly the Sindhi Department. “It was Memon who prepared the written test paper and got selected his two blue-eyed candidates,” they added.
Among the candidates, Soomro has contributed five research books on Sindhi language while Tabassum was the senior-most having a MPhil degree, but the contenders declared successful have only completed their Master’s degree with no research on the respective subject.
The sources further said that the candidates declared unsuccessful have demanded the cancellation of the selection results based on favouritism and nepotism. “They have demanded a transparent committee to re-interview the candidates so that the eligible ones can get equal chances.”