ISLAMABAD: Three federally-chartered universities have been facing severe financial crunch, even finding it difficult to pay salaries and pensions, Dawn has learnt.

Quaid-i-Azam University (QAU), International Islamic University Islamabad (IIUI) and the Federal Urdu University of Science and Technologyare suffering due to low funding from the Higher Education Commission (HEC).

Sources said HEC and the Ministry of Federal Education and Professional Training had requested the government for a supplementary grant of Rs2.5 billion to resolve the issues of these universities.

`Yes, we have moved a summary seeking Rs2.5 billion for QAU, Urdu university and IIUI,` said Secretary Education Mohyuddin Ahmad Wani. He said these universities were in the dire need of funds.

`Hopefully, funding issue would be resolved soon after approval from appropriate forums,` he said.

Meanwhile, sources in HEC said the higher education sector of the country was facing a shortfall of Rs60 billion.

`Higher education sector has been facing a shortfall for the past several years...the sector faced a shortfall of Rs17.7 billion in 2018-19, which is continuously increasing,` HEC Chairman Dr Mukhtar Ahmed told a National Assembly standing committee a few months ago. He had said: `Now the higher education sector is confronted with a shortfall of Rs60.1 billion. HEC requirement was Rs125 billion while the allocation was Rs65 billion [for the current fiscal year].

Dr Mukhtar had said the gap was further widened by a decrease in the recurring grant per student from Rs67,528 in 2018-19 to Rs50,956 in 2023-24.

The said committee had stressed the need to enhance the budgetary allocation for education to at least 4pc of the GDP in upcoming budget for the fiscal year 2025-26.

A source in HEC said after 18th constitutional amendment, providing funds to provincially chartered universities wasthe main responsibility of provinces.

However, except Sindh, other provinces were not providing required funds that resulted into an extra burden on HEC at the cost of federally charted universities.

`Our major chunk is being spent on provincial universities. Now we have been pushingprovinces to providefunds to their universities,` said an official at the HEC.

He said the overall funding of HEC was stagnant for the last many years while pension and salaries and utility expenditures had been increasing. The official said universities in KP and Balochistan were badly hit finically.

`In this budget, we will request the federal and provincial governments to provide required funds to universities as without funds the higher education sector can`t make progress,` the official said.