LAHORE – The Punjab Higher Education Department (HED) will need years to replace the mechanism developed by the Higher Education Commission, Pakistan Today has learnt. According to HED officials, the provincial body lacks the capacity to handle higher education like HEC.
The head of the 18th Amendment implementation committee, Raza Rabbani, has already said that HEC would be devolved along with the Education Ministry, whereas HEC chairman is of the view that the commission falls directly under the prime minister, therefore, it cannot be devolved.
HED Additional Secretary Haroon Rafique said the federal government had not yet taken provincial stakeholders into confidence, therefore, immediate shift of responsibilities would not be possible. He said that nothing was available in black and white regarding the devolution of HEC, and “what we are hearing is all in the air.”
To a question on better budget allocation to the province after the devolution of the Education Ministry, Haroon said, “We will have to wait and see what the Centre does in this regard.” He said HEC had been working for years and created a proper mechanism, which would not be easy to replace at once. Lack of capacity and budget in the Punjab government may halt various programmes initiated by HEC, whereas all political parties, except the Pakistan People’s Party, are against HEC’s devolution.
PML-N spokesman Ahsan Iqbal has already spoken against HEC’s devolution, but if the responsibilities of HEC are transferred to the Punjab government, it is hard to imagine who would accept the responsibility. Punjab HED sources also claim that replicating HEC’s infrastructure in the province would take much more time and the HED did not have enough capacity to cater to the problems that could emerge after the devolution.
A lecturer at Punjab University’s Institute of Communication Studies told Pakistan Today that PhD scholarship from HEC had been approved, but the same was now in jeopardy. HEC former chairman Dr Attaur Rehman also claimed that all vice chancellors of public sector universities agreed in principle that HEC’s status quo should be maintained.
Experts believe that HEC is protected under the 18th Amendment and the federal government should not touch it at any cost. If HEC is still devolved, thousands of students who engaged in PhDs abroad may have to come back, leaving their studies stranded, while the degree verification process would also have to be done by the Cabinet Division, which can affect appointments and admissions at a large scale.
