Daily Times

PESHAWAR: The University of Peshawar (UoP) is set to change the fee structure after the failure of the provincial government to meet the needs of the university. The decision will adversely affect higher education enrollment ratio in the province. Talking to Daily Times, the Economics Department Senior Prof Faheem said, “The economic condition of the province and government to allocate funds for higher education categorically implies that the enrollment rate of higher education in the province will drop.”

Khyber Pakhtunkhwa (KP) allocated Rs220.5 million for higher education of which Rs8, 417 million for colleges, Rs761 million for technical colleges and universities and Rs97 millions for achieves and libraries in the budget of 2016-17. Faheem said since the provincial government announced a minimum budget for higher education which will force the public sector universities to increase fees by about three to four times. The province has suffered enormously in the course of man-made and natural calamities, but for most households paying for higher education is simply out of reach.

Another calamity of the reduced allocation of funds to universities is that most of the universities seekfunds for the completion of ongoing infrastructure works such as academic block of the Islamia College University, the conflict management block of the Peshawar University, the academics blocks of the Abdul Wali Khan University and others.

Peshawar University Teacher Association President (PUTA) Jamil Chitrali said that Provincial government allocated Rs40 million to UoP whereas the Conflict Management Study block infrastructure required Rs100 millions for its completion. He said that he personally requested Chief Minister Pervez Khattak for extra money in the budget for UoP to complete the infrastructure of Conflict Management Study Block but nothing had been approved yet. He said that apart from infrastructure, the libraries of the various departments, including main university library, lacked required books as the university budget dose not allow new purchases to be made. He said due to the budget issue, research work in university is also in dismal condition.

Chairman Pashto Department Abbasin Yousafzai said the Islamia College University (ICU) owning to budget issue could not manage to complete the infrastructure of the Academic Block for the last eight years. He said the current infrastructure of the ICU is too old and unable to accommodate the influx of the students. However, Ali Hoti, Media Protocol Officer and personal secretary to Vice Chancellor of the ICU, declined to comment on the issue related to higher education budget allocation for the university infrastructure.

Media Protocol Officer of the Abdul Wali Khan University Mardan (AWKM) Abid Khan said that only one phase of the university infrastructure out of three had been completed and the university had stopped working on the rest due to shortage of funds.

He said that the university desperately sought funds to complete the university building and provincial government should have paid due attention to higher education.