Zubair Qureshi
All Pakistan Tenure Track Association (APTTA), a representative body of Tenure Track faculty across Pakistan during a press conference at National Press Club Friday, criticized the Higher Education Commission (HEC) for “jeopardizing the jobs structure and future of 4500 tenure-track faculty members of universities in Pakistan.” President and General Secretary of the association, Dr. Yasar Shah and Dr. Tanveer Shehzad informed the media persons that the HEC had revised the funding policy of the TTS. This has serious repercussions for the job security, annual increments, and promotion of the TTS faculty because the HEC’s share of TTS funding is going to shrink under the revised funding policy.
Universities have already stopped hiring new TTS faculty despite the fact that the same faculty has been the best performing component of university faculty for two decades as per the HEC’s recent survey published in 2019. The APTTA President conveyed that the TTS system was working very well before the arrival of the current Chairman HEC.
Since the current chairman took charge, universities have doubled down on violating the statutes governing the TTS system because the HEC is disowning the TTS faculty which was launched by them. Therefore, the APTTA has also demanded that the chairman HEC should ensure compliance of the TTS statutes in the universities in true letter and spirit. In addition, the PM approved complete salary is also being not given to the TTS faculty.
APTTA cabinet has given the HEC a deadline of February 3, 2023 that HEC should withdraw the new funding policy notification issued on december 16, 2022 and restore the old funding policy.
