Islamabad: Higher Education Commission (HEC) is likely to face
another financial crisis as planning commission has provided only 20% of
the budget and organization has no sufficient funds for payment of
salaries to the universities after next two months.
Sources told
this news agency that Planning commission has provided 20% of the total
budget for the HEC during the first quarter of the year and
organization is facing severe financial crises.
Sources said
that planning commission is not providing funds for the recurring budget
through which salaries are paid to the universities employees.
Earlier
HEC also cut down the budget of varsities to 10 to 15% and their
management was facing severe financial problems while this is now
addition to it.
Source in the HEC said that the current status
of financial conditions is worse than those in last year and declared
the situation to be the worst in the history of the country.
Sources
further added that lack of sufficient funds would greatly affect the
scholarships programmes for the new students and provision of tuition
fee under higher education commission.
Besides this, non
disbursement of development funds has affected more than 150 projects of
HEC while construction work on 10 to 15 projects in universities
campuses is also affected.
Sources further added that in order
to facilitate the students who are studying abroad through scholarships,
budget which was earlier allocated for different construction projects
is now being utilized for these students.
Talking to Online,
Executive Director HEC Dr Sohail Naqvi confirmed that planning
commission has released only 20% funds for recurring budget which is
creating problems for HEC.
He said that every month Rs 97
million were released to HEC by planning commission but the expenditure
of universities and educational projects are twice this amount.
Dr
Sohail further told that negotiations are continuing between HEC and
planning commission to make a strategy to manage difficulties. Online
