PESHAWAR(National Times)- Peshawar High Court has sought replies from the Khyber Pakhtunkhwa government and vice chancellors of public universities in the province to a petition challenging appointment of teachers to varsity administrative posts.
A bench consisting of Justice Mohammad Ijaz Khan and Justice Mohammad Faheem Wali declared that all respondents, including KP government through its higher education secretary and vice chancellors of public sector universities, should submit their respective comments within a month to the petition filed by lawyer Mohammad Asif Babar.
The petitioner has requested the court to declare illegal the appointments of teaching faculty to full-time administrative posts such as the registrar, treasurer, deputy registrar, director (planning and development) and controller of examinations.
He sought the court’s directives for the respondents to fill all administrative positions in the universities with suitable and competent administrative officers and to immediately cease the illegal practice of assigning fulltime administrative responsibilities to teaching faculty.
The petitioner sought directives for the higher education department and other provincial authorities to take immediate remedial measures to ensure proper governance, accountability and strict compliance of statutory provisions of Khyber Pakhtunkhwa Universities Act, 2012, and Universities Statutes at all public sector universities in the province.
The petitioner, who appeared in person, said that the provincial government had enacted the KP Universities Act, 2012, which was amended from time-to-time, to regulate the affairs of public sector universities of the province, whereby administrative officers, academics and teaching faculty had been specified as per its different provisions.
He said that Section 28 of the Act provided that statutes might be made to regulate the affairs of the universities and to prescribe terms and conditions of service, criteria and procedure for appointment of employees, officers and teaching staff of the Universities subject to provisions of the Act.
Babar said that the Act was amended in 2016 to cater for assigning of the charge of administrative positions to teachers and in this regard, Section 17-A was inserted in the Act, which clearly emphasised that in no case, teachers and officials other than administrative officers should be posted on administrative positions.
“All administrative positions in universities shall be filled by the Administrative Officers of the university on regular basis and in no case teachers and officials other than Administrative Officers shall be posted on these positions. In case suitable candidate is not available from amongst the Administrative Officers, the University shall ensure immediate appointment on such post in the prescribed manner,” he quoted Section 17-A as stating.
The petitioner contended that despite clear statutory provision, for the last many years, all key administrative positions, including those of the registrar, treasurer and director finance, controller of examination, auditors and other essential positions in most of public universities, had been without regular appointees and had been run through acting or additional charge basis amongst teachers.
