Sindh university teachers body to boycott exams

Sindh university teachers body to boycott exams
Hyderabad: Sindh University Teachers Association decided on Thursday to boycott ongoing semester examinations as well as the convocation scheduled for Dec 22 as a mark of protest against an incident in which a lecturer was subjected to humiliation by an outsider a few days ago.

The association held a general body meeting at the university's Jamshoro campus took the decision with majority votes after failure of talks with a 10-member committee headed by pro-vice chancellor Dr Rafia Ahmed Shaikh.

The secretary of the association Prof Badar Soomro said that the outsider who insulted teacher of political science Naseem Abbas Abbasi during the ongoing examinations, was moving about freely and police had not arrested him yet although he had been nominated in an FIR.

He said that two murders had taken place in the hostels and some students had been subjected to sexual assault over the last eight years because of inefficiency of the administration.

Even jirgas had been held in the university to settle such grave issues, said Prof Soomro, adding that good governance had become a misnomer on the campus.

Nobody's life, property or self respect were safe and armed robberies, purse and motorcycle snatching and exhibition of arms had become order of the day, he said.

He said the police and Rangers on whom the university was spending millions of rupees had failed to maintain law and order.

These circumstances forced the university teachers to go public, he said. He appealed to the president, prime minister and governor of Sindh to provide protection to university teachers.

Meanwhile, the vice-chancellor of the university Mazharul Haq Siddiqui urged the teachers not to boycott examination because it was no solution to the problem.

Addressing a meeting of deans of faculties, directors and chairpersons of teaching centres, institutions and departments on Thursday, he said that the boycott of examinations was affecting a large number of students and urged protesting teachers to return to their duties. Dawn