Ahmad Hussain
Through your esteemed newspaper I venture to draw attention of the honourable President of Pakistan; Ministry of Education and Professional Training and the Higher Education Commission towards the financial crunch that the National Institute of Historical & Cultural Research, a Centre of Excellence under the Quaid-i-Azam University, Islamabad has been facing for the last three years.The NIHCR, a venerable institution of research in history and culture, is in dire financial straits and in need of both a short-term infusion of funds to keep it operational and a long-term solution to keep it financially sound so it can continue to grow in conducting world-class research.Quarterly grants released by the HEC are squeezing over the last three years so much so that the NIHCR authorities have stopped paying house rent ceiling and granting medical reimbursements to its staff thus putting all the blame on the HEC for not allocating and releasing the sufficient funds. Ironically, adding fuel to fire, all the Toms, Dicks and Harries are playing their roles in further ruining the already perturbed NIHCR staff over non-holding of the departmental promotion committee meeting for ten years and grant of time scale to senior employees besides non-placing of staff welfare schemes before the Board of Governors, which has now become a get together exercise.The end-line of the prevailing situation is that salaries and retirement benefits of pensioners for the month of January 2022 have not been paid as yet. The efficiency of the NIHCR administration can be gauged from the fact that in a reshuffling bid, charge of the incumbent Administrative Officer has been assigned to the Librarian; Administrative Officer has been assigned the charge of Private Secretary to (acting) Director whereas a Cataloguer has been asked to work as English Composer. All the vested interests are busy in settling their scores by calling the shots in the absence of a permanent Director. A senior research fellow divulged that the HEC authorities are bent upon pressurizing the NIHCR authorities for generating funds without taking into account the fact that the NIHCR is a research institute and capacity building of a research institute and promotion of research are prime responsibilities of the government.Moreover, out of four NIHCR staffers who had retired in 2020 and 2021, one could manage to receive his full retirement and other pensionary benefits owing to his well placed connections in the Accounts Section the rest are still awaiting payment of their dues due to non-allocation and non-releasing of sufficient funds. As many as four staffers each are going to retire in 2022 and 2023.The reality is that for its smooth functioning, the NIHCR coffers need an adequate supply of funds which has been deficient for a while and woefully lacking at the present time. Paucity of funds has pushed NIHCR employees to resort to frequently visiting Director office to register their grievances but to no avail. It is unfortunate that the HEC has been wreaking havoc on the NIHCR by starving it of funds; humiliating for the Ministry of Education and Professional Training the way required funds are not being released to the NIHCR and shameful for the President House that it has not been taking cognizance of the situation of the financial crunch being faced by the State institutions in general and the NIHCR in particular.Through these lines, the NIHCR faculty and the staff beseech the all the authorities concerned for their intervention to save the NIHCR from financial collapse and restoration of its financial viability.
