LAHORE: The Bahauddin Zakariya University (BZU) Multan Academic Staff Association (ASA) general body on Thursday issued an ultimatum to the administration for acceptance of their 13-point resolution by Feb 15.

Failure to meet their demands would result in complete boycott of the classes and a sit-in outside the vice chancellor office.

The ASA general body meeting was held at Jinnah Auditorium in which a large number of teachers participated.

ASA president Dr Abdul Sattar Malik chaired the meeting while secretary Dr Khawar Nawazish administered it.

Mr Nawazish said that the ASA had presented a 10-point charter of demands to the admin-istration of the university in December 2024 and no action was taken yet which resulted in calling a meeting of the general body of the staff association.

He said the meeting was called to convey a strong message to the administration for acceptance of their demands.

ASA member Dr Aleem Khan said the administration was running the university like a company and all the decisions were taken through executive orders rather than calling meetings of different bodies of the university according to its Act.

He said the administration was violating the Act of the university. `This is not Lahore, Islamabad or Gujranwala that the administration would increase the fee of the students.

It`s south Punjab where the students could not pay heavy fees for education and if the univer-sity was facing any financial problems then it should stop corruption in the campus.

Another member Dr Sohaib Qadus said they would not allow any administration to increase the workload of the teachers.

He claimed that Rs60 million would be saved for increasing the workload of the teachers but solarisation of the university would save Rs20m per month.

The general body also presented a resolution containing 13 points that include rejecting the increased workload of teachers, merger of different departments and faculties without proper approval of board of faculty, academic council and syndicate, withdrawing a new duty leave circular, holding selection board for promotion of PhD lecturers and condemning Federal Board of Revenue (FBR) decision to discontinue the 25 per cent taxrebate for researchers and fulltime teachers,.

Other demands include rejection of new pension rules of government, maintaining university infrastructure, and ensuring performance increments for TTS faculty, provision of funds for installing new electricity meters and foreign evaluation of the PhD thesis of the teachers, and approval of SNE committee recommendations about creation of new posts.

The house also pledged that they would not approve any strategic plan against the Act of the University, calendar and teachers.

The generalbody unanimously approved the resolution and also announced a deadline (Feb 15) for acceptance of their demands.

They also announced to hold a sit-in outside the VC office and would completely boycott the classes in protest.