Daily Times

ISLAMABAD: The institutional negligence of the administration of Allama Iqbal Open University (AIOU) has destroyed university’s vehicles worth of millions whereas currently, eighteen Land Rover jeeps is of no use other than to auction them on scrape rate.

According to reports, AIOU received 18 Land Rover jeeps from a British NGO, the Overseas Development Organisation in early 80’s as a donation. At the time of their arrival, the custom department also not received import duty on these vehicles.

The jeeps were used by several departments of the university for more the 15 years and after that these vehicles were parked in the university by declaring them ‘off load vehicles’, which means that these cars have no more for use.

The said vehicles are currently parked in backyard of the vice chancellor’s office but their dilapidated condition is itself a question mark on the performance of varsity’s administration as the vehicles, which were parked in running condition, are now converted into a scrape.

A driver of the university on the condition of anonymity told Daily Times, “The vehicles are considered ‘off load’ because of minor technical problems but the continuous negligence of the officers and lack of interest shown by the university administration has converted these vehicles into scrape”. He said, “University could get better price in case of the auction of these vehicles on time but now the jeeps are not in condition to auction properly and they would go on scrape rate only”.

Transport Department Assistant Registrar Syed Zulfiqar Bukhari has briefed the
Daily Times, “We could not auction the said vehicles because we received these jeeps as a donation whereas the custom department also waved the import duty on these vehicles at the time of their deliverance”. He said, “We asked for permission for auction from the Federal Board of Revenue (FBR) but they refused to allow auction and directed us to handover these jeeps to Customs Department”.

The AIOU Vice Chancellor Prof Shahid Siddiqui has responded on the issue and said, “The matter was pending before my appointment as VC in the university and I have directed the concerned department to dispose of these vehicles as per the law and it will be done in next few months whereas a committee in the chair of Dr Abdul Hafeez has also been constituted in this regard”.

The committee Chairman Dr Abdul Hafeez said, “The executive council of the university has allowed to handover the said vehicles to custom department and we have formally written a letter to the custom officials to bring back the jeeps but no reply has been received so far”. Another source told the Daily Times that the Customs Department has refused to itself bring the vehicles into their custody and asked the university to shift these vehicles in their warehouse but the university’s transport department has no funds to move the vehicles.

Daily Times has learnt conclusively that the institutional negligence has caused the loss of millions to the university as the market value of a down model Range Rover jeep vary between five lakh to ten lakh rupees.