Qauid-i-Azam University facing funds shortage'
Islamabad: Qauid-i-Azam University is badly suffering due to lack of funds. Female students are seeking residence in the university hostels. Lack of funds and allocation in the present budget presented by the PPP government has created many problems, especially for the higher education institutes. There is much regrettable situation in the top-level universities of the country.
Vice-chancellor of Qauid-I-Azam University (QAU) Dr Muhammad Qasim Jan said, " QAU is the best public sector university, across the country, students enroll here in different disciplines but lack of funds is the main hurdle to expand the departments or create more seats for those students who come from far-flung areas of the country to get admission in the university.
He said, "80 percent students were seeking hostel facilities but we could not succeed to provide them hostels because of less capacity in the hostels due to which a large numbers of the that students are living in rented houses or with their relatives in miserable condition."
Only 20 percent students were studying from the twin cities, who are day-scholars, and those who were living in rented houses their studies are also affected due to skyrocketing house rents and price hike, the VC told this correspondent.
Dr Qasim Jan said that especially female students, 2,500 in numbers, were suffering more than male students when they could not find place in the hostels.
"We are already giving Rs 250 crore subsidy in transport to 6,000 students of the university and fee schedule is also not much tough", he noted. However, the VC said that it was difficult for the university to pay salaries to their employees in the current available funds. He mentioned that several times the university advertised the post of Director (Planning and Development) and some other vacant positions in the university but no one was ready to come at that salary package which the university was offering.
To a quarry, the VC said that to settle all these problems he had a plan to construct more hostels in the university premises and to start four-year under-graduate programme and for this purpose Rs 6 billion PC1 submitted to the Higher Education Commission (HEC)", he mentioned.
To another question, he said that so far no response from the government has come. He further said that due to lack of funds he could not do accordingly in the expansion of the university.
A top official of the HEC confirmed that funds released by the government to the HEC did not meet the requirements so, therefore, the HEC was unable to release required funds to the universities, especially QAU. The source further said the HEC continuously was convincing the government for more funds in its meetings with government officials.
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