120 lecturers of UoP demand regularisation

PESHAWAR: At a time when the University of Peshawar administration has banned recruitment of contract employees due to huge cut on the universities’ grant by the Higher Education Commission, around 120 contract lecturers of various departments of the university have demanded regularisation.

The contract lecturers have submitted formal appeals to the university administration and sought intervention of the chancellor, who happens to be the Governor, of the public sector universities for regularisation of their services.

The contract lecturers opined that they had been appointed under contract employees’ policy. They said selection of the undersigned lecturers was according to the prescribed procedure for employment. The positions against which they had been appointed were properly advertised in newspapers, screening tests were conducted, demonstration held, and they were properly interviewed by the university’s selection committee headed by deans of the respective faculties.

The contract lecturers said majority of them were the best graduates of their sessions in the university and were having higher qualification of M.Phil and PhD. Most have been serving in the university for eight to 10 years, but still they were on contract, they added. They said the present government recently regularised a number of contract lecturers. The PHC has also regularised the services of a large number of civil-judges-cum-judicial magistrates through a notification, they said and stressed that their services should also be regularised.