Daily Times

LAHORE: Since the inception of the Virtual University in 2002, its employees are working on contractual basis and they are awaiting implementation of service structure for the last 15 years.

Established in 2002 as a federally chartered university, the varsity works under the Information minister, with president of Pakistan as its chancellor and the Information Ministry secretary as its Board of Governors (BoGs) chairman. However, besides being a federal institution, the VU has not implemented the federal service structure, which implies the basic pay scale (BPS). Moreover, there is also no increase in salaries of its employees for the last five years. Nevertheless, the university did implement service statutes in 2009, which divides employees into 13 categories ranging from pays scales titled E-I to J-VIII, and salaries starting from Rs 10,800 to a whopping amount of Rs 232,800, excluding house rent, travelling allowance and utility bills. All other allowances are very higher for upper categories as compared to those for low scale employees.

One of the senior employees of the VU, wishing not to be named, told Daily Times explained that the employees fear to face axe if they raise voice against nepotism and irregularities at the university. “In the past, whoever raised voice was kicked out as mentioned in service rules that service contract of any employee could be terminated without assigning any reason anytime on one month’s notice or immediately by paying him one-month salary.

He added that the higher management of the VU was the main hurdle in regularisation of employees as per the federal service structure. The management fears that its hegemony will be vanished if the varsity follows federal government’s pay scale system. He demanded President of Pakistan Mamnoon Hussain, Minister for Information and Technology Anusha Rehman and the Higher Education Commission (HEC) to provide relief to the VU employees. Another employee, requesting anonymity, said those employees, who had been terminated, earlier tried to challenge their termination orders in a court of law but of no avail, as the university is a statutory body which observes its own rules. “It is a matter of great concern that the VU employees lack any forum to seek justice against such unjust rule, which openly violates employee rights,” he added

When contacted, VU Public Relations Officer (PRO) Qamar Riaz said, “The VU is a statutory body working under the umbrella of the Ministry of Information Technology and Telecommunication, and we follow our charter.”