Railways on track, but education derailed

Despite declaring 2011 the ‘Year of Education’ in its annual education policy, the federal government does not have a single paisa to pay to the Higher Education Commission (HEC) for releasing the second instalment of public sector varsities’ grants as the Rs 1 billion given to the Pakistan Railways (PR) were from the account of the HEC, Pakistan Today has learnt. Last week, the federal government released a tranche of Rs 1 billion to the PR for paying off the monthly salaries and pensions to its serving and retired employees. However, the amount was taken from the funding intended for the HEC and as a result the state-run universities may fail to run their affairs.
An HEC official, requesting anonymity, told Pakistan Today that the government-run universities may not get their recurring grants for the next three months – November, December and January – as the federal government has paid Rs 1 billion from the account of HEC to the PR. The public sector universities having no external resources – that is they do not offer degrees to private or external candidates – are dependent on the government grants would be badly affected. “The HEC pays the [annual grants of] public varsities quarterly in four instalments after every three months. The universities may not get the second instalment of the current fiscal year because the Centre has no money after paying Rs 1 billion to the PR,” the HEC officer added.
When contacted, HEC Committee of Vice Chancellors Chairman Prof Dr Naushad Sheikh expressed his ignorance of the matter and said that the HEC had released the instalment for the first three months of the ongoing financial year that will expire on October 31.
“I have no idea about this problem and hope that the second instalment would also be delivered to the HEC before the end of this month. As yet the HEC has not received the amount from the Centre.”
Sheikh said that the HEC had received the money from the Centre for the first instalment of payment to universities for August, September and October.
He was hopeful that the second instalment would also be transacted to the HEC account shortly.
The public sector varsities do not have the money to pay staff salaries or purchase materials required for research work or to complete the ongoing research projects from next month (November).
It is worth mentioning that the Centre has only been releasing recurring grants to public sector varsities and not the grants under the account of Public Sector Development Programme. However, the federal government now does not even have the money to release the recurring grants to the universities.
Talking to Pakistan Today, University of Karachi (KU) Vice Chancellor (VC) Dr Pirzada Qasim Raza Siddiqui also expressed concern that the varsities may fail to pay the salaries of the ongoing month as the Centre does not have enough money.
“I have no idea that the federal government gave the HEC allocation for second instalment to public sector varsities to the PR or any other department but I have information that it has no money left to release the second part of the educational budget,” he said.
“I fear that the varsities may fail to pay off this month’s salaries to teaching and non-teaching staff and the universities not having external resources may fail to function from next month.”
The KU VC said that the state-run universities are passing through a critical period as the Centre has increased the employees’ salaries by 50 percent last year and also given a raise of 15 percent this year. “Last year the government released the grant including salary raises, but this fiscal year, the Centre increased salaries by 15 percent and did not allocate the increment amount.”
Siddiqui said the KU pays Rs 80 million in salaries to its employees every month through generating up to 47 percent from external resources amid a huge cut of 40 percent in recurring HEC grants. “The KU receives only four percent of the total monthly expenditures from tuition fees and even if it increases the fee by 100 percent, it would only be increased to eight percent,” he said. “This is not the solution to this problem.”
Siddiqui said the KU has requested the HEC a number of times to give public sector universities adequate funding to pay off staff and continue academic activities and research work. “But the HEC has paid no heed to these requests so far.”