PESHAWAR
The teaching faculty of the Islamia College University (ICU), under the banner of the Teaching Staff Association, staged a protest outside the vice-chancellor’s office on the varsity campus on Wednesday.
The teachers were protesting against the university’s chancellor ‘illegal measures’, ‘dictatorial’, ‘pedagogical’ and ad-hoc based policies in the university.
Teaching Staff Association President Dr Izhar Ahmed said that besides members of Islamia College University Peshawar, teachers and employees from different departments joined the protest held to raise genuine demands of the varsity faculty members. The participants also held a joint general body meeting of teachers and other employees of the university outside the VC office.
It is pertinent to mention here that the employees of Islamia College University have started a protest movement from January 27.
According to faculty and staff, the university was facing a severe financial and administrative crisis due to the vice-chancellor. The financial deficit of the university is increasing. Instead of taking any significant steps in this regard, the Vice Chancellor is increasing the fees of students and paying incomplete salaries to the employees. At the end of the meeting, the president of the Teaching Staff Association, Dr Izhar Ahmed presented the resolutions which were unanimously approved by all the participants.
The first resolution strongly condemned the Vice Chancellor’s poor performance, illegal measures and lack of seriousness and disregard for solutions.
The second resolution gave the Vice-Chancellor a five-day ultimatum to show seriousness in resolving these issues within three days, as well as to assure the representative organizations that the issues would be resolved.
The symbolic protest of all the teachers and employees will continue till the ultimatum in which all the employees will wear black armbands while the officials of all the representative organizations will protest daily in front of the office of the Vice Chancellor.
Dr Izhar Ahmed threatened that if their demands were not met, the association would announce a protest on February 14, adding that partial and full strike options would also be applied to press the VC to accept their demands .
