Karachi University teachers boycott classes over unpaid bills
The entire faculty of the University of Karachi is boycotting varsity’s evening classes from Thursday because of the unpaid bills for the past year.
Karachi University Teachers Society or KUTS, the representative body of the varsity’s teachers, issued a statement saying that the society’s last meeting had decided that teachers reserved the right to boycott classes if pending bills of the previous two semesters were not cleared by October 20.
KUTS secretary Dr Mohsin Ali told SAMAA Digital that for the past year, bills for evening classes had not been cleared.
“We have met the vice-chancellor and the (university’s) director finance numerous times, but nothing happened,” he said.
“Every time, the VC and the director finance assured us that they have passed the directives to their subordinates and the bills would be cleared soon,” said Dr Mohsin.
Members of the morning faculty, who also teach evening classes, are paid on per lecture, per lab and per class basis. They have also not been paid for the past two semesters.
According to Dr Mohsin, a lecturer is paid Rs1,200 per class, while an assistant professor gets Rs1,600 a class, an associate professor gets Rs1,800 per class and a professor gets Rs2,000 for every evening class they take.
“These rates are not market competitive, yet teachers take classes for the sake of students,” said Dr Mohsin.
Dr Mohsin clarified that the boycott will not impact the morning classes.
“KUTS executive council will hold another meeting on Monday, and if the issue is not resolved, we will decide future strategy," he said.
A university official told SAMAA Digital that the bills are not being cleared because of changes in the administration.
“We have done some transfers and postings which caused the deadlock. The outgoing personnel did not properly hand over the files to the newly-posted personnel,” he said.
“The university maintains digital, as well as manual data of all files, and we are tracing the (relevant) files. We are hopeful the bills will be cleared in two to three days.”
Karachi University
