ISLAMABAD, July 24: To solve the crises/shortage of faculty members in the educational institutions all over the country, Higher Education Commission (HEC) has placed 1041 Pakistani PhDs at public sector and private sector universities.

Faculty members, who have recently completed their PhDs, were appointed on contract of one year and they will get Rs104,000  per month.

Media coordinator of HEC, Murtaza Noor said that PhDs may be hired on permanent basis on completion of their tenure through the normal selection process of the host institution.

HEC also offers these scholars a startup research grant of Rs0.5 million, upon joining the host institutions. So far, the Interim Placement of Fresh PhDs (IPFP) programme has processed around 1416 applications, while 233 applicants are at the different stages of placement, he said.

An officer of HEC requesting not to be named said that HEC has decided to shelve its Foreign Faculty Programme (FFP) because of financial crunch.

Local PhDs cannot be a replacement of foreign faculty members but still some thing is better than nothing.

“Foreign faculty members were getting around Rs300,000 per month but now in that money we have decided to hire three PhDs,” he said.

The placed scholars belong to diversified fields like Water Resource Management, Biotechnology, Food Engineering, Animal Nutrition, Biochemistry, Nano-chemistry and Nano-catalysis and other disciplines.