Varsity engages visiting faculty to fend off protesting teachers

PESHAWAR, March 28: Shunning demands of protesting contract teachers for regularisation of services, the Agricultural University, Peshawar, has engaged a visiting faculty at its Institute of Business and Management Sciences (IBMS). The IBMS Teachers' Association claims that mostly clerks, technicians and two students of MBA and BCS are teaching the BIT, BS (Computer Science) and BBA students at the institute. The IBMS was set up in 1998 and soon became an income generating organ of the university, but the teachers continued to work on renewable six-month contract. Teachers having served the institute even for up to 12 years have now been denied extension, as they are demanding regularisation of their service. These teachers had filed a writ petition in the Peshawar High Court in March 2009 for regularisation and while the petition is pending the university administration hired a visiting faculty. The association, which recently held a protest in front of the Governor's House to press for their demands, alleged that the university administration had neither extended their job contracts nor increased their salaries as per the government's announcement to force them to withdraw their case from the PHC. In a statement, Mohammad Amin, the association's secretary information, also alleged that clerical staff, including system administrators, technicians, office assistants, had been teaching the Bachelor's classes at Rs500 per class. When contacted, Agricultural University registrar Dr Mohammad Zulfiqar refuted the accusations that clerical staff was teaching the Bachelor's level classes. He said that since the teachers had taken the issue to the court they could not appoint any teacher through regular procedure. He clarified that the university had hired the visiting faculty, which had 16 years of education for teaching purposes. Dr. Zulfiqar said that majority of the IBMS teachers were hired on contract without adopting a proper procedure back in 1998 and those teachers whose case was weak were now taking part in the protest. When contacted, Federation of All Pakistan Universities Staff Association president Dr Fida, who also teaches at the Agriculture University, condemned the baton-charging of teachers by police during a recent protest. He said that the administration needed to formalise the status of the IBMS and then hire the teachers through a proper procedure.