Teachers at Karachi University (KU) staged a boycott of evening classes on the campus as a protest against the non-payment of their remuneration, which has been withheld for over a year. The decision to boycott the classes came in response to recent remarks made by KU Vice Chancellor Prof Khalid M. Iraqi during a meeting with teachers’ representatives. In the meeting, Prof. Iraqi indicated that the evening program was running at a loss and suggested that teachers could stop teaching those classes if they were not receiving compensation for their services.
Prof Soleha Rehman, President of the Karachi University Teachers’ Society (Kuts), expressed disappointment in the Vice Chancellor’s remarks, which led to the unanimous decision among teachers to boycott the classes indefinitely. She noted that the fee structure for the evening program was three times higher than that of the morning program.
The total amount of pending payments is estimated to be around Rs30 million, and teachers have also been denied their enhanced salaries. Prof Rehman lamented that the Vice Chancellor did not offer any relief to the teachers during the meeting.
Additionally, teachers at KU are concerned about the removal of two major private tertiary-care hospitals from the university’s panel list for healthcare services. When this issue was raised during the meeting, the Vice Chancellor reportedly suggested that government employees, including teachers, should seek treatment at public sector hospitals if they encounter problems with health facilities on the university’s panel.
Regarding the concerns raised, VC Prof Iraqi clarified that the meeting focused exclusively on a single-point agenda, which was the waiver of MPhil and PhD semester fees for KU employees and their children. He emphasized that any other discussions about the meeting were not accurate and that fee waivers could only be approved by the university syndicate.
Regarding the pending dues for evening classes, Prof Iraqi acknowledged that teachers should be paid promptly for their services and mentioned that he was working to resolve the issue. He stated that he had recently secured the release of pending dues amounting to Rs5 million. However, he also explained that the merger of funds between evening and morning programs had caused delays in payments to staff members, contributing to the issue.
