Daily Times

Despite barriers and dire consequences from their bosses, a large number of faculty members, working at universities across the country, staged a protest on Tuesday here against futile promotion policies of Higher Education Commission (HEC) Pakistan.

Holding placards and banners inscribed with slogans in their favor outside the HEC building in sector H-9, faculty members reaffirmed that they will continue to protest until acceptance of their demands.

Under the umbrella of All Public Universities BPS Teachers Association (APUBTA) dozens of teachers at the day-long protest chanted slogans to press the authorities to fulfill their genuine demand. They also said although they are peaceful they will continue the protest until slumbering authorities concerned awake up and pay heed to their plight.

Documents available with Daily Times read that soon after the protest call issued by APUBTA a couple of days back, heads of many universities issued circulars at their respective varsities directing all faculty members to refrain from participating in the scheduled protest.

However, according to the teachers, they broke all hurdles and decided to participate here without bothering curt authorities’ directives as , they said, it’s their constitutional right.

In their speeches, the protesters said that there are around 55000 BPS teachers working at the various public sector universities across the county. They threatened that if all teachers come out along with their hundreds of thousands of students, it will be highly problematic for the authorities.

They stressed on issuance of their notification regarding approval of service structure / promotion policy for all BPS teachers of public sector universities, of which the HEC has already given commitment in writing in the past.

According to them, the BPS teachers of public universities are denied and deprived of their fundamental right of promotion because of lack of service structure due to criminal negligence of HEC since its establishment in 2002. As per section 10(q) of HEC ordinance 2002, the HEC is tasked to prepare the criteria and guidelines for promotion of university teachers which the former has been unable to perform after two decades since inception. It has created serious issues related to promotion and seniority for over 50,000 BPS faculty members of public sector universities.

Currently, the APUBTA is struggling to address the promotion related problems of the varsity teachers since 2020 and it has staged several highly successful nationwide protests. During this period, it also held scores of meetings with HEC officials and convinced the latter on this issue. Thus, HEC officials signed written agreements with APUBTA on October 20, 2020, October 14, 2021, March 10, 2022, and July 24, 2023, making a commitment every time that the service structure / promotion policy for BPS universities teachers will be approved and notified with a period of 2-3 months. HEC officials also made a commitment before the meeting of the Senate standing committee on Education in its meeting on August 22, 2022 and also before National Assembly’s standing committee on Education in its meeting on February 3, 2023 that promotion policy for varsity teachers would be approved soon. Besides standing committees of national assembly and Senate of Pakistan, the special committee of National Assembly for the aggrieved government employees issued clear directives to chairman HEC to do the same. But HEC officials reneged all their commitments and written agreements, violated directives issued by the parliamentary committees and also violated promises made to FAPUASA on this issue. About three months have passed since HEC gave its last written commitment to APUBTA and FAPUASA on the subject but yet the meeting of the commission has not been called for approval of the promotion policy for BPS universities teachers.