QUETTA: Hundreds of workers from Balochistan University, including lecturers, senior professors, and other female staff members, demonstrated in front of the institution on Tuesday to voice their displeasure over the last three months’ salary nonpayment.
Gathering at the main gate of the university, the demonstrators blocked the Sariab Road with stones and barricades, causing traffic to be disrupted and affecting adjacent cities.
The demonstrators chanted anti-university and anti-provincial protests while holding signs and banners expressing their complaints.
The protest’s organizer and president, Dr. Kaleem Ullah Barech of the Balochistan University Academic Association, blasted the university’s administration for failing to handle the continuous financial crisis, which he claimed had led to the suspension of both administrative and teaching staff salaries.
“All employees, especially the non-teaching staff, have been severely impacted by not receiving our monthly pay for the past three months,” Dr. Barech stated. He also mentioned that the university has been in financial crisis for many years due to the province government’s inability to come up with a workable solution.
He claimed that although active employees were not receiving their other benefits, such as housing rent, retired employees had not received their pension in several months.
Other joint action committee representatives who spoke during the demonstration emphasized that the extended non-payment of salaries in combination with consistently high inflation was causing severe hardship for the university’s personnel.
They demanded that the Higher Education Commission, the federal government, and the provinces allot the required funds to relieve Balochistan University’s financial hardship.
Dr. Barech told Dawn, “We will continue our protest sit-in until receiving our three months of salaries,” stressing that similar financial difficulties were being faced by other public universities in Balochistan.
