The Higher Education Commission is a representative figure of all public universities and fulfills their requirements. Due to the lack of the HEC budget, various universities face many problems and difficulties.
According to the statement of The News, Pakistan has spent only 64 billion rupees on Higher education. It is not even half the budget of one American University. Other than that, there is not a statement that, in this 64 billion budget, 80% in for the employees’ salaries. Thus, only 20% of this is for students and university students. Despite that, there are no funds and grants for the students. In contrast, a lot of universities are getting loans to pay the salaries of their employees.
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HEC Official Statements
However, HEC demanded Rs 70,000/students grant from the Pakistan Government. But, the government gave only 56 349 per student. According to the official, HEC calculated the allocated amount without deducting the staff salaries.
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Other than that, HEC also requested to grant Rs 104billion for the expenditures and 42.6 billion for the budget development. As a result, the government grants only 64 billion for the year 2020-21. HEC stated that 135 public sectors have more than 1.2 million students in different disciplines. To these students, around 130,000 to 150,000 teaching and non-teaching staff is available. Thus it will be challenging for the universities to cope-up.
Universities Loans
Due to the low budget, many institutes are getting loans from the government to pay the salaries of their employees. Such as:
- UET Lahore got an Rs.300 million loan from the Punjab Government in December 2020.
Similarly, various other universities facing the same problem issued a notification not to pay salaries to the staff. The Quaid-e-Azam University, a top-ranked institute, is also facing the same problem.
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On this QAU, VC stated that have you ever imagined what will happen if the top university has no budget to purchase the lab equipment.
Now, hopefully, the government will take some intellectual steps and initiatives to solve these problems. As this is a very serious matter and the future of students and Pakistan is in danger. Thus, there is hope that the government will sort out this soon.
