GUJRAT: The University of Gujrat (UoG) has been facing acute shortage ofteaching staff for the last severalyears as the new hiring too faces a delay due to litigation and other reasons.

Sources in the university administration said the shortage surfaced after around 100 teachers left the UoG during the last four to five years either toget jobs in other universities or to go abroad.

At present, more than 250 seats are lying vacant in the university. It has only 450 regular faculty members while shortage is being met through visiting faculty whose number has reached 350.

According to the criteria set by the Higher Education Commission (HEC) for teacherstudent ratio, the universities are bound to ensure at least one teacher for 20 students in science subjects and one teacher for 30 students in other subjects.

The total strength of the UoG students has been around 18,000 students in at least 43 departments.

The UoG administration hadadvertised more than 200 vacant posts of faculty and administration this year; however, some senior administrative officials filed a writ petition before the Lahore High Court, challenging the advertisement.

According to a senior faculty member, the litigation has resulted in the decline in teacher-student ratio and subsequently the quality of education as many senior PhD teachers left the university due to lack of promotion in the last five years and at present there are only less than 10 full professors in the whole university.

Another very important factor in this regard, he says, is that Punjab Higher Education Department (HED) devised aformula of 1:1.5, which means for one faculty there will be 1.5 times administrative staff whereas in UoG there were 450 faculty members and total administrative staff was some 1,155, far higher than the requirement.

Admitting the shortage of teachers, UoG Vice Chancellor Dr Mushahid Anwar said litigation was over after dismissal of the case from the court and the university administration had started shortlisting candidates for these posts. He hoped that the process of hiring would start soon.

Meanwhile, the VC has constituted a four-member special committee to ensure the proper disbursement of allowances toonly 20pc of the staff on a rotational basis to distribute the benefits proportionately among all employees working in the evening programmes. Currently, the allowance is being allocated unfairly, with preferential treatment and repetition for certain administrative officers who have been under severe criticism by the university staff and civil society.

According to a notification issued by the UoG registrar on Friday, Pro VC Dr Muhammad Mushahid Anwar, Deputy Registrar E-II Dr Khalid Iqbal, Deputy Treasurer (Pay) Faisal Bhatti and Deputy Registrar L& C Zain Nabi have been nominated as the members of committee.