The University of Karachi (KU) has fired three ‘ghost’ faculty members and eight non-teaching staffers, it was learnt on Wednesday.
The varsity has directed the ‘ghost’ faculty members and non-teaching staffers to return the monthly salaries they collected in their absence. They also warned the terminated teachers of legal action if they fail to return the payment.
The matter of ghost teaching and non-teaching staffers came under discussion in a meeting in which a member pointed out some employees who were absent from their offices, yet they were drawing salaries.
“The teachers, who were terminated from their services, include Department of Applied Chemistry teacher Farha Siddique and Department of Agriculture teacher Rameez,” KU Registrar Prof Dr Moazzam Ali Khan said.
He added that non-teaching staffers, who were terminated, were associated with different departments and they were serving the varsity on contractual basis.
“It would be the first time in the history that the varsity is retrieving money from those employees who were taking regular monthly salaries in their absence from their respective departments,” Khan claimed.
He further said “The varsity retrieved one million rupees from Department of Applied Chemistry teacher Farah Siddique, which she received even though she had not served in the department.”
However, Department of Applied Chemistry Chairperson Prof Mehdi Hassan Kazmi said that Siddique is on leave and claimed that he had not received her termination letter so far.
On the other hand, Department of Agriculture chairperson Prof Dr Saleem Shahzad claimed that Rameez sought two-week leave in January but had not come back to his office again. “I have received a letter from Registrar that he has been terminated over uninformed absence,” he said.
Karachi University Teachers Society (KUTS) President Dr Shakeel Farooqui added “Six months before the varsity had terminated three faculty members, who left abroad for PhD and could not come back to their offices, after issuing show-cause notices. The third teacher, who was terminated, was Dr Sania and she was associated with the Department of General History.”
