Dr Razia Sultana, Vice Chancellor SBBWU Peshawar while recalling her journey as VC and Varsity’s achievements on women development, lamented on the shortage of adequate funds. She said that it was a daunting task to be VC but she managed to fulfill her dream and passion to empower women. “Although it was a very difficult decision but I courageously joined Shaheed Benazir Bhutto Women University (SBBWU) Peshawar. Now, the period spanning around four years has given me true satisfaction as I trained a number of girls for defending their fundamental rights while living in the patriarchal world
Originally, Dr Sultana is a historian with specialization of Afghan history and professor in Qauid-i-Azam University (QAU). She was selected as Vice Chancellor SBBWU in 2014. While talking to Daily Times, she said, “Finding a chance to work where I had to look after thousands of girls especially in the province like Khyber Pakhtunkhaw, was not less than a ‘miracle’.” Before her joining, she said, no significant attention was given in the varsity toward girls’ education. “Now the picture is totally changed as the girls who graduated from this varsity are taking part in every walk of life”, she claimed.
Currently, she said, varsity is offering around 45 programs in 23 different disciplines. Besides this, faculty of Women Development Centre department was a unique initiative with no parallel across the country. The objective was to prepare young girls for efficiently performing their future roles as wives and mothers, and get involved in the nation building process. The department offers education in Food and Nutrition, Personal Grooming, Interior Decoration, Child Care, The Islamic Law, Functional English, Fundamentals of Management, and Introduction to Information Technology.
She claimed that outcome based research was emphasized over the research-for-the-sake-of-academic degrees. “The strategy resulted significant change as now the total number of our faculty’s annual publications was around 300 while we produced around 80 MPhil and 10 PhD scholars in different fields”, she quoted.
However, she complained about financial constraints in the varsity. She hoped the provincial government as well as Prime Minister Imran khan will pledge for the adequate funds to ensure idealistically functioning of the Varsity.
The HEC is the authority to disburse funds amongst all public sector varsities in the country. “The total annual expenditures of the SBBWU are Rs 25M while the government grants us Rs 18 million annually”, she explained, adding that the rest Rs 7M are being generated through varsity’s own resources. She regretted that even Rs 25M was too insufficient and stood as a barrier in further enhancing women development and other academic and Varsity facilities.
It may be pertinent to mention that the cries for funds shortage in the higher education sector were fostered by HEC management on floor of the house last week as well. The HEC claimed that the sector is facing deficit of Rs 27 billion.