PESHAWAR: The University of Peshawar is facing critical financial crises as it has no funds to pay salaries to its 2,800 employees and pensions to its 1,540 pensioners on February 1.

Apprehensive of the situation, UoP Vice-chancellor Dr M Asif Khan wrote a letter to Chief Minister Mehmood Khan on January 27 and requested him to provide at-least Rs200 million bailout package to the university enable it to pay forthcoming salaries and pensions to its employees.

In the letter, a copy of which is available with this news agency, he also requested the government to approve a grant of Rs150 million for the university to meet its monthly operational expenditure.

According to the letter, the vice-chancellor of the one of the oldest and leading institutions of higher education in the country, both Higher Education Commission and provincial government were continuously informed about the critical financial position of the university during the last several months and grant of bailout package was sought but to no avail.

UoP lacks funds to pay salary and pension

It said that the main reason of the shortfall was insufficient increase in grant over the period of last 12 years.

It added the grant was not correspondingly increased over the period to match the burgeoning expenditures in the head of salaries and pensions as announced by the government.

The letter said that from financial year 2006-07 to 2018-19, salaries were increased by 270 per cent with Rs470 million in 2006-07 to Rs1737 million in 2018-19 while the pensions were increased by 979 per cent with Rs84 million in 2006-07 to Rs906 million in 2018-19.

It said that against an increase of Rs2089 million in salaries and pensions, the increase in grant for the same period was only Rs819 million despite the fact that the university was following the government basic pay scales and pension rules.

Currently the university has to pay Rs160 million under the head of salaries and Rs70 million for pensions, Rs133.40 million for commutation, Rs20 million for utilities and Rs20 million for miscellaneous expenditures.

The letter said that the university had taken several measures to overcome the deficit during the last two years by increasing enrolment of students, hostels revenue and succeeded to generate Rs325 million.

However, the amount was not enough to meet the ever increasing expenditures on accounts of salaries and pensions, it added.

The letter said that the university had Rs69.611 million cash in all its bank accounts against the shortfall of Rs203.597 million.

Published in Dawn, January 28th, 2020