PESHAWAR: Governor Khyber Pakhtunkhwa Shah Farman has advised the vice-chancellors of all public sector universities to refrain from exerting political pressure on him in their personal interests to make decisions.
The governor, who is also the chancellor of the province’s public sector colleges, warned the VCs to refrain from such actions immediately.
He said that, according to a letter sent to all VCs here on Sunday, anyone found defying those instructions would be strictly punished, without exception, under the applicable laws and regulations.
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“The Competent Authority (Governor) has taken very seriously the fact that certain vice-chancellors are approaching various politicians and are attempting to exert political pressure on the competent authority to influence the decision-making process in their personal interests,” the letter says.
Writes letter to heads of public sector universities
Not only are these actions of VCs equal to wrongdoing on their part as government servants under laws and regulations, but they also induce diversion of their focus from academic and administrative tasks, causing enormous losses to their respective educational institutions’ students and academic standards, it says.
When asked about the reasons for sending the letter to all the VCs, the officials in the department of higher education displayed indifference of the Chancellor’s political pressure to make decisions of their choosing.
They said, however, that in the seven public sector universities, someone may have approached the governor to take advantage of the ongoing selection process.
A few days ago, the department of higher education sent a review of the shortlisted candidate to the chief minister for the selection of vice-chancellors to the province’s seven public sector universities.
“It is a tragedy that vice-chancellors and scholars generally approach influential leaders of the ruling party to take advantage of various issues,” Dawn told the vice-chancellor of a public sector university when speaking on the governor’s message.
He said the letter was an insult to the VCs who were leading the province’s higher educational institutions. It is going to send a really negative message to the students, who are going to wonder about the actions of their university heads,” he added.”
He said that not all VCs were the same, but that some of them may have lobbied lawmakers to put pressure on the governor to determine their preference.
Instead of issuing a letter to all state-run university VCs, the chancellor should have given a letter of discontent as a sanction to those VCs who placed political pressure on him, the vice-chancellor said.
He said that if the governor had the confidence to give a letter of discontent to a handful of the VCs, then the others would not dare contact the chancellor for favours by political leaders.
He said the governor had released a general letter to all the VCs instead of threatening those VCs who were using political outlets to place pressure on the chancellor.
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The governor is the prime state official, and instead of sending cryptic letters to everyone, he should be very specific in dealing with university affairs, he said.
The vice-chancellor said that the chancellor was afraid to offend those who pressured him and blamed all the VCs instead. He continued that a university was headed by a vice-chancellor and the letter would not send a positive message to the individuals and students.
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