Daily Times

ISLAMABAD: At last Higher Education Commission (HEC) swung into action and constituted a probe committee to investigate the alleged corruption and irregularities made by the senior management of the top ranked Quaid-i-Azam (QAU), Daily Times has learnt reliably.

As per letter, copy of available with this scribe states that the HEC formulated a three member committee that includes M A Kamal Dean University of Engineering and Technology (UET) Taxila as convener while the members of the committee were HEC’s Director General Planning and Development (DG-P&D) Muhammad MazharSaeed and Muhammad Shahid joint Chief Economist Planning Commission Islamabad.

The letter reads that the committee will complete the investigation in alleged irregularities within 15 days and submit it with HEC. The sources in the QAU disclosed that a couple of days ago the committee visited the university and held a day-long meeting with various senior faculty members separately.

The committee inquired frequently the various queries from the faculty members, said the sources adding that most of repeated asking violations are out-of-tern promotions and appointments in the varsity, keeping a large amount of university’s endowment money in low cost commercial bank, stopping promotions of some faculty members by management on personal grudges base, violation of some certain sort code of conducts, giving wrong statements to presidency about absentee of a syndicate members in three consecutive meetings, and many others points were raised by the committee.

The available information revealed that management the QAU in 2015 deposited Rs 160 million in the Dubai Islamic Bank (DIB) Sector G-9 Markaz Islamabad, for a three-year time period.

The bank is lowest in the rating as compared to other three banks who offered the university to avail their services. As per ranking, DIB has A grade that is less standard than other couple of banks who offered university for depositing funds with them. The HBL and Askari Bank Limited (AKBL) have ‘AAA’ and ‘AA’ scores respectively.

The profit ratio of DIB was also less than other couple of banks. Moreover, the university’s syndicate also directed for transfer of funds from the DIB.

An official in the varsity wished anonymity, said that these malafied practice was inquired by the said committee.

Another most frequent pointed out highlighted violation was the promotion of Mona Liza against the post of Professor. Her promotion was made in recent while she was not fulfilling legal criteria for this purpose.

It is pertinent to mention that above said irregularities and violations were also reported by Daily Times earlier

The university’ spokesperson IlhanNiaz confirmed regarding the committee visit.

The QAU management of the view that the HEC has no mandate to hold such investigation directly as the varsities are autonomous bodies. “It should not go beyond given authority in the constitutional act”, said an official while quoting HEC act 2002.

As per the act, the HEC has power mainly to formulate policies, guiding principles and the priorities for higher education institutions for the promotions of socio economics in the country. Moreover, the evaluation of the performance of the institutions and preparations through consultations with the institutions is the basic and important prerogative of the Commission while advising the federal and provincial governments on proposals for granting a charter to award degree in both public and private sectors is also another important authority of the HEC.

IlhanNaiz said in a written email that the HEC has no authority to conduct such an inquiry. “The Vice Chancellor (Javed Asharf) is preparing to file complaints with the Chancellor, Pro Chancellor, and the Prime Minister, against this behavior of the HEC”.

As per law, president (MamnoonHussain) is chancellor, federal minister of education and professional training (Baligh Ur Rehman) is pro chancellor of the varsity.