LAHORE - The Punjab Higher Education Department (HED) has withdrawn its own notification, which cautioned vice chancellors of public sector universities who are going to retire in less than six months, against holding any selection boards and making appointments, The Nation has learnt.
According to the notification issued in June this year, “All vice chancellors/registrars of public sector universities of Punjab should ban recruitments in universities where remaining tenure of vice chancellors is less than six months and where acting vice chancellors have been assigned to look after charge.”
According to the sources, the Government College University vice chancellor who is retiring in a month has advertised some posts and called a meeting of the Selection Board on Friday (today). Sources said that recruitment to a number of important posts would be approved at today’s GCU Selection Board.
Sources said, as per advice of the law department, the notification restricting vice chancellors of public universities from holding any selection board or make any recruitments has been withdrawn.
The Selection Board of GCU as per the Government College University, Lahore 2002, Statutes and Ordinance published in the Punjab Gazette Extraordinary Issue on September 10, 2002, consisted of the vice-chancellor (chairperson), one vice chancellor of a general university to be appointed by the chancellor, chairman or a member of the Punjab Public Service Commission to be nominated by the chairman, dean of the school (faculty) concerned, the chairperson of the teaching department/director of the institute and principal of the constituent college, concerned and one member of the syndicate and two other members to be appointed by the syndicate; provided that none of them is an employee of the university.
It is pertinent to mention here that members of selection board other than ex-officio members shall hold office for three years.
A spokesperson for the department told The Nation that a summery was forwarded to the chancellor (governor of Punjab) to seek advice on restricting public sector universities’ VCs who were retiring in less than six months to hold the Selection Board and recruit people. “If a Selection Board is being called of any university then the earlier issued notification was definitely revised, but I am not sure of it,” he said.
