Mounting protests lead to Urdu varsity VC leaving campus

KARACHI: A dispute between teachers and the administration at the Federal Urdu University intensified on Thursday at the university’s Gulshan-e-Iqbal Science Campus, where protesting faculty members surrounded Vice Chancellor Prof Dr Zabta Khan Shinwari’s vehicle as he tried to leave the premises.

The protest was led by teachers demanding payment of delayed salaries, pensions and other benefits. During the confrontation, a faculty member identified as Asghar Dashti lay down in front of the vice chancellor’s vehicle while raising slogans over unpaid dues. The teacher was heard saying:

Pay our salaries, pay our pensions. Our households are suffering and people are struggling to make ends meet,

The latest confrontation came after several days of demonstrations by teachers from both campuses of the university. Faculty members had already boycotted ongoing examinations and set up a protest camp outside the administrative block. Their demands include release of overdue salaries and pensions, payment of house ceiling benefits that they say have been withheld for more than a year, reinstatement of dismissed teachers, and direct negotiations with the vice chancellor.

Teachers detail protest and departure

Representatives of the teachers’ association said the vice chancellor did not hold direct talks with the protesters. They alleged that after faculty members confronted him, he first tried to leave the campus on foot and later attempted to depart in an auto-rickshaw. According to the teachers’ representatives, the rickshaw driver did not continue after protesters gathered around the vehicle.

Witnesses said the vice chancellor later crossed University Road through the area where work on the Red Line project is under way and left on a motorcycle. After his departure, protesters briefly blocked University Road and staged a sit-in, disrupting traffic in the surrounding area.

Additional grievance raised by teachers

Faculty members also chanted slogans calling on the vice chancellor to apologise to a female professor. Abdul Haq Campus Teachers Association Secretary Prof Iqbal Naqvi said the vice chancellor had allegedly threatened Political Science Department Chairperson Prof Dr Rani Iram during a conversation earlier in the day.

Naqvi said the faculty planned to submit a harassment complaint over the matter. He added that teachers had repeatedly sought talks over salaries, pensions, house ceiling payments and medical benefits, while also pressing for an apology to the professor.