Daily Times

It was said that creation of rules and regulations is the most fundamental in running the affairs of any institution, but perhaps such exercise does not matter for Pakistan Institute of Development Economics (PIDE) as the institution is running without any rules for the past many years.

It was learnt that the administration of the institute never bothered to formulate rules after the institution got recognised by the Higher Education Commission in 2006.

According to Section 26 of PIDE Act 2010, it became mandatory to publish formulated regulations and rules in the gazette of Pakistan.

An official said on the condition of anonymity that each management including incumbent PIDE Vice Chancellor Dr Asad Zaman and PIDE Registrar Dr Safiruddin made no serious efforts to keep in progress this integral job.

“Actually, both officials intentionally delayed the matter as they wanted to do some illegal business on their own,” said an official wishing not to be quoted, adding that many irregularities were practiced in the last four years by the administration.

“Currently, rules do exist in PIDE internal file but the management makes changes in the clause as per their own needs and creeds,” the official explained.

While sharing the details, the official said that approval of several official matters, which was prerogative of the syndicate, selection board and academic council, had been rejected on the reason of non-publishing of PIDE rules.

As per PIDE Act, there are different bodies for legislation including the Senate, Syndicate, Academic Council and Selection Board. Each body has different prescribed functions and it works accordingly.

The official said that all these rules are not yet part of official documentation which is very regretful.

When contacted, PIDE VC Dr Asad Zaman said that the rules were approved in January this year and sent to the parliament of Pakistan for final legislation.

Published in Daily Times, September 13^th 2018.