ISLAMABAD: The Higher Education Commission (HEC) is facing severe management and policy issues, because of the non-appointment of heads of various departments, Pakistan Today has learnt reliably.
HEC is an independent, autonomous, and constitutionally established institution responsible for primary funding, overseeing, regulating, and accrediting Pakistan’s higher education.
Sources privy to the development told Pakistan Today that various departments of HEC were functioning without heads, due to which the commission was facing severe management and policy issues. They said that positions for information technology director general (DG), research and development DG, services DG, and quality assurance agency DG were among a few important posts which were lying vacant.
The sources said that in the absence of officials occupying these positions, other officials were assigned additional charges. This not only caused frustration among these officials but also badly disturbed the working of the commission. They added that the commission is receiving complaints from people on a regular basis mainly due to non-appointment of heads of various departments.
The HEC is responsible for formulating higher education policy and quality assurance to meet international standards, as well as accrediting academic degrees, development of new institutions, and uplifting existing institutions in Pakistan, therefore, the vacant posts should have been filled long ago, the sources added.
A senior official said that HEC had launched a number of initiatives, such as an online degree attestation system, adding that the commission has created a new portal, through which applications for degrees attestation can be submitted. He added that the system was designed to facilitate degree-holders to save them from waiting in long queues to have their documents attested.
However, the official said that the students pass through a great ordeal because the link of the portal is frequently not working and despite receiving complaints on a daily basis, no action has been taken to fix the problem.
He also said that HEC has started another good initiative called Education Testing Council (ETC) which conducts free of cost tests for various posts, but all such good moves prove counter-productive due to ill-planning as several universities are yet to conduct testing through ETC.
The official lamented that the situation is similar in all departments which are running without a head. Hence there are resentments among officials because some unqualified officials have been given additional charges.
When contacted, HEC Director (Media) Ayesha Ikram said that the vacancies for the posts have been advertised.
