THIS is with reference to the report “Exams ‘sabotaged’ by agitating teachers, employees at Khairpur university” (June 4). During my 25 years of service at the Shah Abdul Latif University (SALU), Khairpur, I have observed that majority of the universities in Sindh, in general, and SALU, in particular, are victims of trade union politics. The administrations are taken hostage by the vested interest groups as a matter of routine.

Associations of teachers and adminis-trative staff always work for the vested interests of their stakeholders. They literally ‘sabotage’ the entire academic activity, causing irreparable damage to the cause of educating the students belonging mostly to the lower-middle class of Sindh.

These associations have been able to literally hijack the institutions of higher education for their petty interests. They work to serve the petty interests of different types of mafia, always eager to take undue benefits from the adminis-tration by arm-twisting it into submission.

Ever since a new vice-chancellor took charge of SALU, such elements have been on one strike or another. As happens in such cases, the associations exert pressure on the VCs to get their members promoted even if they do not meet the prescribed criterion. Selection board members were recently kept under constant pressure till late in the midnight to accept such blatantly illegal demands.

A number of teaching assistants (TAs) working on a fixed salary were promoted to the position of assistant professors in BPS-19 without fulfilling the criterion or even appearing in the written tests. Once the objective was achieved, the associations went back to their protests and strikes against the VC on some other pretext to get some other benefit.

Trade unionism in universities must be banned in the larger interest of the academic progress of the nation’s young. Universities across Pakistan need to be in a position to run themselves smoothly.

Prof (Dr) Zulfiqar Ali Shah
Khairpur

Published in Dawn, June 15th, 2024