Karachi University officials face a hostile press
Karachi: A press conference organised by Karachi University (KU) on Tuesday ended in chaos when the university officials who appeared before journalists faced a barrage of questions relating to allegations of massive mismanagement on the campus, corruption by a heavily politicised administration, lack of accountability and, above all, the university's failure to attend to student needs.
The journalists gave little breathing space to the officials, who seemed not fully prepared to respond to such questions.
The press conference was organised to brief the media about the administrative measures being taken to improve the working of the examination section and the university's evening programme admission process.
KU Pro-Vice-Chancellor Dr Nasiruddin Khan was the only person who could speak at the event as representatives of TV channels refused to listen to the other officials by removing their mikes before they could present their viewpoints. The officials included KU evening programme director Prof Abuzar Wajidi, admission director Prof Saleem Shehzad and controller of examinations Prof Javed Ansari.
Dr Nasiruddin Khan started off with what he called a "widening communication gap" between the media and the university administration, and said that journalists shared the responsibility of building the university's image.
Referring to the financial woes of the university, Dr Khan said the KU, like other public sector universities, was in dire straits. "Employees are being paid salaries out of the loan being acquired from the directorate of evening programme. The HEC has clearly told us that we must explore means to generate funds by ourselves and at the same time we should look for public-private partnerships in order to complete our projects," he said.
When asked whether the university had chalked out any plan to cope with the situation, he said that the KU syndicate had set up a committee a few months back to prepare proposals on how to generate income through the institution's own resources. He, however, said he was not aware of the committee's recommendations.
A team of KU officials had been sent to the HEC to seek funds for power generation, examination and sewerage system, he said.
New exam and results system
In reply to a question regarding delays in declaring examination results of external candidates, Dr Khan said that a centralised system of examination and assessment would be set up and all results would be announced within three months after conclusion of exams.
"We are in the process of making arrangements for this purpose. The results of BA and BSc would be announced within 15 days. A four-member committee has also been formed to check discrepancies in the issuance of mark-sheets," he said.
The university wanted to set up a separate directorate to attend to the needs of external candidates and had also submitted a PC-1 to the Higher Education Commission (HEC) in this regard but, suddenly, financial constraints hit the HEC and the project couldn't materialise, said Dr Khan.
When asked whether any punishment was given to the person who lost 300 answer sheets of BCom paper, he said that the examiner responsible for the act of negligence had been debarred.
A number of questions about alleged corruption, a lack of transparency in the exam affairs, incidents of paper leak, increasing influence of student activists in the university affairs were asked but all the queries failed to receive a satisfactory reply from the KU officials.
Regarding invigilation by non-teaching staff, Dr Khan said that he had received such complaints and held out the assurance that steps would be taken against those teachers who allowed non-teaching staff to invigilate in exams.
According to a KU press release, the master's programme admissions under the evening programme are being offered in 28 teaching departments and 16 postgraduate diploma courses. Admission forms would be issued and accepted till June 9. However, the date would be extended keeping in view the delay in the just announced B.Com results.
Classes would commence on July 1, it added. Dawn
