Karachi [Pakistan], September 16 : Teachers at the Karachi University (KU) on Thursday boycotted evening classes on campus in protest against non-payment of their remuneration, which has been withheld for more than a year, Dawn reported.
Dawn is a Pakistani English-language newspaper.
The teachers, while speaking to Dawn, said they were forced to resort to the boycott after KU Vice-Chancellor Professor Khalid M. Iraqi in a recent meeting told their representatives that the evening programme was running into losses and that teachers could stop taking those classes if they were not being paid for their services.
President of the Karachi University Teachers’ Society (Kuts) Professor Soleha Rehman said: “It’s quite disheartening for everyone in attendance at the meeting to listen to these remarks from the vice-chancellor. Hence, all the teachers unanimously decided to boycott the classes in protest for an indefinite period.”
The fee structure of the evening programme was three times higher than the morning programme, she added.
“The total pending amount is estimated to be around Rs 30 million. In addition, teachers are also deprived of their enhanced salaries,” she said, as per Dawn.
Professor Rehman regretted that the vice chancellor was unable to offer any relief to the teachers on any count.
She said that the teachers were also deeply concerned over the removal of two major private tertiary-care hospitals from the university’s panel list.
“When this matter was raised during the same meeting, the vice chancellor said the teachers being government employees should go to the public sector hospitals for treatment if they encounter problems with health facilities on the university panel,” she said.
According to the teachers, the vice chancellor had also refused to waive off semester fees of the university employees and their children, a facility earlier available to the teaching and non-teaching staff.
In replying to these concerns, VC Professor Iraqi said the meeting in question was exclusively based on a single-point agenda of waiving off MPhil and Ph.D. semester fees of the KU employees and their children.
“Only this matter was discussed in the meeting. Whatever else is being said about the meeting isn’t true,” he emphasised, adding that the fee could be waived only by the university syndicate.
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